Jo B. Paoletti
With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A Woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread--
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with the voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the "Song of the Shirt!"
When English poet Thomas Hood wrote "The Song of the Shirt" in 1843, every garment worn in Maryland was handmade, stitch by stitch, from the plain, rough clothing of plantation workers to the embroidered finery of the upper class. Just three years later, Elias Howe would patent the first successful sewing machine made in America, transforming the way that clothing was made and purchased. By the 1880’s, sales of ready-to-wear garments (then limited mainly to men’s and boys’ clothing) surpassed that of second-hand clothing, once the staple of poor and lower-middle-class Americans. By 1920, Americans were spending more on readymade clothing than on yard goods. Today, home sewing is mainly a hobby, enjoyed by millions of Americans who buy what they need, and make only what they enjoy crafting. When and how did home sewing shift from being a necessity to being an optional pastime? That is the question behind my current study of sewing in Greenbelt, Maryland during the 1930s and 1940s.
(For the full article, see Humanities, published by the Maryland Humanities Council.)