Sewing Education

The mastery of sewing skills and of basic garment construction represented one component of the traditional feminine role in the home, and, at the same time, one of the few acceptable ways to earn a living. While it was often assumed that young girls learned basic sewing skills from their mothers or other female relatives, the level of skill varied widely. Formal education in sewing began in the late eighteenth century, primarily in young ladies academies. Here, young women who could afford it learned basic stitching, then moved on to decorative embroidery and needlework, the type of art stitchery that, according to Parker connoted “not only home but a socially advantaged home.”[i] Although this sewing education could be applied to either clothing or decorative art work, the primary focus was not on construction of apparel.

Other types of sewing education began to appear in both public and private schools in the mid-19th century, and in trade and vocational schools by the end of the century. The emerging garment industry, increasing industrialization, and a rapidly growing immigrant population meant there were more women who relied on mastery of the needle not only for family attire, but also for wages. Multiple factors contributed to the growth of formal sewing education. One was the perception that women not only were not learning how to “yield a needle,” many were choosing not to sew at all, the antithesis of expected feminine accomplishments.

It was charity organizations in the mid-19th century that undertook the beginnings of formal sewing instruction intended to teach “plain” sewing and clothing construction. Many of the women these programs aimed to assist were part of a growing class of urban poor with little means of self-support in a world with few employment opportunities.
The counterpoint to teaching sewing for wage-earning was teaching sewing skills to young women for use in their roles of wife and mother. The addition of sewing to public school programs was the result of support from the new home economics movement. Through domestic art and home economics programs, sewing classes were offered at all levels, from elementary or grammar school through college. Eventually, sewing through home economics classes was required in a majority of public schools across the country.

By the 1890s, both public and private schools and organizations began to offer a wider variety of sewing, dressmaking and millinery classes. However, sewing education frequently suffered from a confusion of purpose, and a dual focus in a period when educators continued to identify homemaking as the “eventual vocation” of most girls. While a concern for the unskilled young working girl stimulated the growth of trade education, the argument persisted that women should be trained for homemaking, not manufacturing. Schools therefore frequently offered courses “for homemaking and for a trade,”[ii] to train women for their “greatest industry” - homemaking.[iii]

[i] Rosika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: The Women’s Press, 1984).

[ii]Mary H. Scott. “A Girls’ Trade School Course in Dressmaking”, The Journal of Home Economics 7 (April 1915) 188.

[iii]Albert H. Leake, The Vocational Education of Girls and Women (N.Y.: The MacMillan Co., 1920), 7. See also Mary H. Scott, “A Girls’ Trade School Course in Dressmaking,” The Journal of Home Economics (April 1915): 188.