What was life like before the invention of the sewing machine invented by Barthelemy Thimonnier?
Everything before had to be sewn by hand with a hand needle and thread. It was all very time consuming. However, the sewing machine invented by Thimonnier had little impact on society. His machine was mostly ignored. His machine was a novelty at best and never made an impact on tailors, dressmakers or anyone. The machine invented by Elias Howe and refined by Issac Singer is a completely different story. Howe’s two thread lock stitch and Singer’s fabric feed mechanism were far superior to Thimonnier’s easily unravelling chain-stitch and non existent fabric feed system. Singer was also a master marketer and within fifteen years the sewing machine had gone from a luxury to a home essential. Tailors’ commercial dressmakers and housewives all embraced the sewing machine. In conjunction with Mrs. Butterick’s graded paper pattern clothing became democratized. At this time almost all clothes were made at home, there were no malls with clothing stores, indeed there were few if any ready made cl
