Hand versus Machine Embroidery

 I am often asked why hand embroidery is so expensive, or why I would do it, as it 'takes so long', or why I do not have an embroidery machine as they are 'faster' and 'more professional.' The everyday world has become so accustomed to the simple chain or satin stitch of machine embroidery, on t-shirts, hats, and what-you-will, that this is regarded as 'normal', even preferable to fine hand embroidery.

Yes, handmade embroidery is very time consuming, but it requires real workmanship, and is inherently more valuable than mass produced, machine-made embroidery. High quality handmade embroidery is collectible while machine-made embroidery is not. And that is why I do it.
Of course I have used machine-made entredeaux and laces for everyday items, because making lace is also a time-consuming, therefore expensive art, and hand-made insertions increase the time and cost of everyday items. But for embroidery, I definitely do not want something that is a cousin to Mouse ears from Disneyland.

The question of hand-versus-machine is not new, and is central to the impetus that gave birth to the Arts & Crafts Movement; it has its origins in the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 18th and 19th Centuries, along with cotton gins, weaving machines, and steam engines.

The first embroidery machine was made in France, in 1828, patented by Josue Heilmann. It was run by four people, and could do embroidery work in about one quarter the time of the fastest hand embroiderers. The machine posed a serious threat to the hand-embroidery industry at the time, and they were largely banned in Switzerland. But even there, embroidery machines caught on, and in 1863 by Isaac Groebli invented the Schiffli machine, which could stitch in any direction. Singer touted its sewing machine - while still in the treadle stage - as being useful for machine embroidery, done with a hoop as in with modern free-motion machines. Eventually, Singer developed its own embroidery machine.

There are those who would aver that the embroidery of these machines cannot be distinguished from hand work. However, there are notable differences: machines connect motifs, whether on a border or in a central design; the stitching is 'regular' - of an even length but not necessarily fit to the motif, so the work can look choppy; and until the advent of digitised machines, there were a limited number of stitches possible. The main drawback is that the machine (digitised or not) cannot cope with subtle shadings or make stitch and design choices which distinguish art embroidery, including couture. Yes, couture pieces are hand-embroidered, with the embroidery being fit to the design of the garment the colour, the scale of the wearer, and so on.

From the Middle Ages, most professional embroiderers were men belonging to a Guild which had strict apprenticeships and rules of working for journeymen; women were left to embroidering personal items and decorative arts for the home. Church vestments, spotting of fabrics, men's tailoring, all these were embroidered by men. We have Mr. Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement to thank for bringing women into the profession, as designers and producers as well as cottage-industry workers.

There is a charming and false view of the domestic use of embroidery machines as a family enterprise in the 19th Century: 'As easily used at home as in a factory, a downstairs room of a suitable size would be needed to house the machine. If a machine embroidery business existed in a home, the entire family was usually involved in the process. Generally, the father would oversee the machine’s operation and the wife and children would thread the bobbins, tend to the thread, and so forth.'
Given the size and expense of embroidery machines, and the size and income of the average 19th Century hovel, this is a quaint and dangerously erroneous vision of 19th Century life. I have ancestors who worked in wool and linen and thread mills - father, mother and children of both genders - and they'd have had to amass quite a sum of money to afford one of these machines, or room for it, something hardly possible on the wages of the time.

This brings up the real reason why modern embroidery is so cheap, and if one happens to find something hand-embroidered, it is not cheap, but was produced in China, Maylasia, India, or Indonesia, by people who are earning less than a dollar a day, or worse. They are working in the same miserable, noisy conditions as our 19th Century ancestors, going blind or crippled, for a pittance, while the Boss Man makes all the money.

It is true that the cost of fine craftsmanship in the Arts & Crafts was detrimental to its goal of 'Art for the People', but it is possible now to pay a reasonably fair wage - the $15 an hour much-touted fair minimum wage - and produce beautiful, unique, handmade items in conditions which are humane.

 This is why I am a hand-embroiderer, and offer hand-embroidered goods.

Educating Rita

Recently, I was approached at a guild meeting in our area by someone wanting a Cinderella costume made for her granddaughter. She asked what our rate would be if she provided the fabric, and was told $100 (four hours' work at $20 an hour). She said thank you, she was collecting estimates, and moved on. The subtext, in her demeanour and tone was 'you charge too much. This is a kid's costume.' A similar gown was offered for sale by Ella Dynae Designs for $270 (see below).

I suspect that she was hoping for something in the range of $20 for the project, which would work out to $5 an hour. This may be the state minimum wage in Georgia, but in California it is $10 an hour and the median wage for a seamstress in the US is $11. Given our example, the costume would have cost $40-100 for labour, by a seamstress. I am at the high end of that scale because I am not a seamstress; I am a dressmaker, the median wage for which is $16 an hour.

So, what is the difference between the two?
A Seamstress is one who sews clothing from a pattern or alters clothing. Typically, they do not make their own patterns, work solely by machine, and do not do fine hand sewing. One would go to a seamstress for normal jobs, such as hemming, repairing zippers, making simple everyday clothing. Seamstresses formed the main labor force, outside tailoring, which fueled the expansion of clothing production and related trades from the seventeenth century onward. This expansion was not dependent initially on technological developments or the introduction of a factory system, but on the pool of women workers. Their expendability and cheapness to their employers was effectively guaranteed by the sheer number of available women able and willing to use a needle, their general lack of alternative employment, and by the fact they then worked outside the control of guilds and latterly have been under-unionized. These seamstresses sewed goods for the increasing market for ready-made basic clothes such as shirts, breeches, waistcoats, shifts, and petticoats for working people.

At the cheaper end of the trade, the work of seamstresses did not involve complex cutting, fitting, or designing, though there were no hard and fast rules. "Seamstress" has always been a flexible term, with the work involved dependent on local conditions and the agency of individuals. Some elaboration and finishing was involved, such as tucking or buttonholes. While work done in this style continued, seamstresses were generally distinguished from dressmakers, milliners, mantua-makers, stay-makers, embroiderers, and tailoresses by their lower levels of craft and skill, but at the top-end of the market fine sewing was valued. Their existence was precarious and exacerbated by layoffs due to seasonal demand and unpredictable changes of fashion. In the Victorian period, widespread demand for mourning clothes, short notice given for elaborate evening dresses, and fickle customers were commonly cited as causes of distress through overwork.

There were large numbers of seamstresses in a wide range of situations. They frequently worked as outworkers, on per-piece pay, in small workshops or in their homes. Having learned their trade in waged work, many seamstresses continued to use their skills after marriage by taking in work, often making simple garments or restyling old ones in their own poor communities where they played an important role in the provision of cheap clothing outside the regular retail trade. Some seamstresses were employed in a temporary but regular visiting capacity in wealthier households where they supplemented existing domestic staff and worked by arrangement through an accumulation of sewing and mending tasks, in exchange for a day rate of pay and meals. This practice lingered until World War II in some areas of Britain.

A Dressmaker, or couturiere, is one who makes patterns, designs garments, sews (often by hand), fits the design, scale and trim of the garment to the client, does embroidery, beading, makes trims, does hand finishing, and uses couture techniques. One would go to a dressmaker or tailor for expensive clothing of fine fabrics and trims for an event such as a wedding.

Historically, aristocratic and upper-class women's fashionable Western dress was created by an intimate negotiation between the client and her dressmaker. The investment in the design was principally in the cost of the luxurious textile itself, not in its fabrication. The origins of the haute couture system were laid by the late seventeenth century as France became the European center for richly produced and innovative luxury silk textiles. Thus the preeminent position of France's luxury textile industry served as basis and direct link to the development of its haute couture system. The prestigious social and economic value of an identifiable couturier, or designer's name, is a development of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the Paris-based haute couture created a unique fashion system that validated the couturier, a fashion designer, as an artist and established his or her "name" as an international authority for the design of luxurious, original clothing. Couturiers were no longer merely skilled artisans, but creative artists with identifiable names printed or woven into a petersham waist tape that was sewn discreetly into the dress or bodice. This was the beginning of designer labels in fashion. The client was required to visit the couture house where a garment was made to measure to high-quality dressmaking and tailoring standards.

The couture house workrooms are carefully distributed according to sewing techniques. The sewing staff are divided between two areas: dressmaking (flou), for dresses and draped garments based upon feminine dressmaking techniques, or tailoring (tailleur), for suits and coats utilizing male tailoring techniques of construction. The staff work according to a hierarchy of skills ranging from the première, head dressmaker or tailor, to apprentices. The selling areas, salons, are equally controlled and run by the vendeuse, saleswoman, who sells the designs to clients and negotiates the fabrication and fittings with the workrooms.

In our example, the lady wanted a seamstress who would make a garment according to the pattern directions, for the size indicated, with no fittings or hand finishing. That's fine. However, when my own children were little, I made them costumes all the time, not just for Hallowe'en, and they wore them as playclothes for years, until they could no longer be let out, let down, and were threadbare; my point being that they lasted for years, as they were intended to do. To a child, a costume isn't just a one time wear item, it is the gateway into their magical world of imagination.

To my mind, this deserves the skills of the couturiere.

The Romantic Wedding

Wedding season being upon us shortly, our thoughts naturally turn to silk tulle and orange blossom. But wait, need the bride be attired in white if it suits her not? Why not a garland of myrtle or rosemary, or bay, as the Romans and Elizabethans did? Certainly a Romantic bride is not limited to the choice of Queen Victoria in the colour of her gown, nor to roses or garden flowers in her bouquet or corsage. Herbs may be added to a standard flower bouquet or garland or subsume it entirely, using the Language of Flowers to carry a special message on the day:

Burnet: a merry heart
Calendula: health, joy
Carnation: admiration, pure love
Dill: good spirits
Heartsease (Johnny-jump-up): happy thoughts
Ivy: fidelity, wedded love
Lamb’s-ears: support
Lavender: devotion, undying love, luck
Lemon Verbena: unity
Marjoram: blushes, joy
Mint: warmth of feeling
Myrtle: fidelity, everlasting love, married bliss
Oregano: joy, happiness
Parsley: festivity
Queen-Anne’s-lace: protection
Rose (pink): beauty, grace
Rose (red): passion, love, luck
Rose (white): unity, love, respect, innocence
Rose geranium: preference
Rosemary: remembrance, fidelity, luck
Sage: domestic virtue, long life
Silver-king artemisia: sentimental recollections
Thyme: courage, strength
Verbena: faithfulness, marriage
Wormwood: affection
Yarrow: everlasting love

Queen Victoria aside, wedding dresses were not often white until quite recently, as the dress would be slightly remade to be the best evening or dinner dress. Of colours, any suitable to her complexion may be used, and although black is considered of ill-luck and becoming to few, some Winters may carry it off, in whole or in part of the costume, with aplomb.

In the 1840s, whites extended to ivory, beige,  blonde, eggshell, oyster, and ecru, with satin being the most popular fabric choice. These would be suitable to Springs, Summers, and Autumns.

In the 1850s, figured silks were popular in pale colours of blue, yellow, peach and pink, suitable to Springs and Summers.

 

 In the 1860s, textures silks and satins were often seen, with colours ranging from  ecru to dusty blue (blue being a very popular choice in all ranges). The item below would be very good for Summers.

The 1870s saw a great deal of colour in wedding dresses, ranging from tan, to sage green to rust. Silk was still favoured as the material of choice. These colours would suit Autumns.

The 1880s saw the re-emergence of brocade and other rich fabrics. Whites tended to be in the range of ivory to beige, and pinks and blues were used as accents. Darker colours were also fashionable, as the deep plum below, suitable for Winters.

The 1890s saw a great deal of detailed trim on non-shiny silk. Beading, embroidery, tulle ruching, often in colours, relieved the white or ivory choice. Mid tones of grey, lilac, and periwinkle blue were  seen. These would suit all seasons.

The turn of the century, the 1900s, saw the dainty use of fine lace and tulle for gowns, with ivory being the most popular white, and heavier laces such as Irish crochet for a richer look. These were often lined in pale colours of pink, yellow, blue and green, suitable to Springs, Summers, and Autumns.

The 1910s continued the trend of layered net and lace, with coloured silks underlays, beading and embroidery, in pastel to medium colours. Blue, lilac, and all shades of pink were popular, suitable to all seasons.

For those interested in our wedding dress range, please visit our virtual catalogue on Pinterest at Brother Rabbit Weddings.

Reality Vs. Ideal

Several bloggers of costuming and historical clothing (American Duchess, Wearing History, Dreamstress) have written about the issue of privacy and the reality behind their 'seemingly perfect' lives as doyennes of the historical sewing world, and issued a challenge to others to consider this, both as a topic of contemplation and doing so oneself, at least briefly.

This arose because of commentary from readers, asking if they ever made mistakes, despairing because the readers didn't have time or money to make such gorgeousness, or that they felt run over by their real lives.

There is an opinion in our media-driven world that anyone who publishes a blog is thereby a public person and forfeits the right to privacy; we take an older view, that public and private lives shall not mix, that decency, courtesy, graciousness, civility, and tact shall reign in one's public life, and that differences of opinion, whether social, religious or political, should be civilly discussed in private, and affect neither business nor political life.

It should be a given that 'life happens' to us all in equal measure. However, with the rare apology for absence due to illness, death in the family and so on, we believe that our public life should focus on its purpose, in this case the English Arts and Crafts and its methods, designs, ethics, and continuance. If our aim is to inspire, and to enable others to have oases of graciousness and beauty in their lives, it serves no useful purpose to lament the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It might serve us to reflect on a Pre-Raphaelite painting of some similar subject (Waterhouse's Miranda springs to mind), but that is misfortune made an opportunity for Beauty, which is perhaps a good spiritual practise.

Further, we have ideals - of beauty, of form, of philosophy - to uplift us from the mean concerns of the everyday, and to help us give meaning to such happenstances as Life chooses to visit upon us. We think of the private lives of Msrs. Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Ruskin. Every PRB fan knows these details, as indeed did the whole group at the time. But the details were not splashed all over the media. Nowhere do we find Mrs. Ruskin/Lady Millais writing to the agony aunt of the Times, or Topsy publishing his domestic intricacies alongside News From Nowhere.  Not because these details are shameful or embarrassing, but because in the end, they do not matter.

They do not matter.

What matters is what we create, the legacy we leave.

Ars longia, Vita brevis, as Topsy liked to say.