National Sewing Machine Day is celebrated on 13 June every year.
The design of the first sewing machine dates to 1970 when an English cabinetmaker by the name of Thomas Saint drew up plans for a machine that could stitch leather.
Although, the first functional sewing machine was reportedly invented by the French tailor, Barthelemy Thimonnier, in 1830.
The handy household tool has greatly improved the efficiency and productivity of the clothing industry, which in the UK contributes almost £20bn to the economy, according to the UK Fashion and Textile Association’s latest report.
Within South Asian culture, the word tailor can be traced to the word ‘Darzi’ which is a Hindi-Urdu originating word, which in terms of etymology, is derived from the Persian word ‘darzan’, which means “to sew”.
The word ‘darzi’ many would associate with the sounds of the sewing machine whirring, the scissors slicing through silk fabrics being cut and the smell of some discerning fabrics with distinctive smells such as bourette, silk linen, and dupioni.
The Industrial Revolution can be attributed to the booming textile industry between 1780 and 1850, wherein the heart of West Yorkshire, historically the very centre of the UK’s traditional textile industry, lies many former textile mills nestled amidst factories and cobbled roads.
As Yorkshire is rich in history and culture, many of the former textile mills were the main source of employment for many parents and grandparents of immigrant children migrating from rural Punjab, Kashmir, and the Subcontinent, to work in textile mills in the Northwest of England.
Dr Rajiv Prabhakar, a lecturer at The Open University, told Asian Sunday “Bradford’s textile mills were a place where different faiths common in South Asia, such as Hindu, Muslims and Sikhs that worked alongside each other, however, the history of those mills often overlooks the role that women played as fellow workers.
“In those same mills, people of different colours and creeds, including people from Hindu, Muslim and Sikh backgrounds in those self-same night shifts worked together and had the same interests in tackling poverty and inequality”.
Dr Prabhakar added, “The sewing machine is important as research shows that women were a target audience for sewing machines. Indeed, some historians have suggested the sewing machine helped create a ‘gendered capitalism’'”.
The sewing machine impacted both businesses and families, as mass production of clothing was driving economic production, it helped make the textile industry one of the major drivers of the Industrial Revolution.
As many South Asians began to migrate to the UK after 1947, typically the men would go to work and the women would stay at home, often tending to the children, where many learned to pick up the skill of being able to sew, one seamstress reflects on this being a part of her childhood and the reason she is pursuing this skill as a career.
Upon learning that it was National Sewing Day, the owner of ‘creative seems’, an at-home seamstress and sewing tutor is celebrating by sharing a post on social media saying, “It’s National Sewing Machine Day today, a happy one to my fellow creatives”.
Iqra Raffiq, a seamstress and sewing tutor says, “Sewing is part of her life, and she is celebrating by finishing off her orders”.
“I was brought up in a home where things were made at home, like curtains, duvets, and everything. It was a norm when we were growing up when our families came from back home and settled here, typically women would stay at home, doing house-wife things, and then in their spare time, with whatever fabrics they had around them”.
Miss Raffiq says she has always known sewing to be a “female thing” and something men tend not to do, however, it was in university, that she learned, that men in the fashion industry, are the ones that cut the patterns and iron, however, she says back home, “A lot of the men are darzis, there are a lot of men that sew, including all my uncles”.
However, she says times have changed, as “It isn’t the norm to be able to sew anymore or to decorate the house how we used to do, like on the sofas, we would have the drapes and covers that were homemade, but you don’t see that anymore”.
Running her own business for the past four years after graduating from Batley School of Art in Fashion Design, she tells Asian Sunday that she “Really wanted to do something in the creative sector, but I didn’t know which art route to go down and my mum used to sew at home, and so did my aunties and everyone back home in Pakistan.
Taking on commissions for orders that she works on from home, she says “Now I’m at a place where I am ready to share this with other people, I have just back today from teaching, so now my career Is teaching others how to sew, as it can come to any use to anyone, from sewing men’s trousers to a bedsheet.”
Teaching South Asian women how to sew, some women are older than her, she says “I am only teaching you what I know”, she said she wants to pass on the knowledge she knows.
The seamstress reflected on her work and said she is impressed by her own work, as she has made waistcoats, dinner jackets and more recently, she had sewn a maternity wedding dress that was a beaded netted wedding dress.
Established in Shropshire, an online-only lifestyle clothing brand, which operates with only one or two staff on a day-to-day basis, and started as a side hustle, incorporates British tailoring with South Asian culture to produce gilets and waistcoats that are based on traditional cultural clothing.
Alex Bland, co-founder of ‘Darzi’ told Asian Sunday that the company originally started making gilets and waistcoats and having them made in India, which inspired the name of their British meets desi clothing brand.
“It was essentially premised on a straightforward Nehru gilet design, which is the traditional collar design being the Nehru collar, which is where the obvious traditional design elements feature”.
Bland says, “Making clothing in Asia and in the UK is similar, as we use the same processes, it is still quite labour intensive, in the same way, that it was in India, with lots of people in a factory, doing different stages of stitching a garment and that sort of process stays true.
“Sewing machines are an integral part of all aspects of the production process, whether it’s taking the initial patterns and putting them together, from lining to finally stitching on buttons and adding any trims that you might put on”.
The decision to make everything in the UK, was about quality control, as the co-founder says, “It makes more sense, from an environmental standpoint to make clothes close to one’s home market, whilst we started out in India, a few years ago, everything is now made in either London or the West Midlands”.
The fashion and textile industry in England, Wales and Scotland employs around 500,000 people, made up of 88,000 employed in manufacturing, 62,000 in wholesale, and 413,000 in retail.
However, globally, online reports show that the garment industry employs 60 million workers, of which nearly 75% are women, who are disproportionately represented in the most vulnerable, marginalised, low paid and impoverished forms of work.
Today the art of sewing remains quite a labour intensive and there doesn’t seem to be a way around it, as organisations and awareness groups work to improve the working conditions and pay for workers in the global garment industry.
