About This Quiz
The invention of the sewing machine revolutionized both the textile industry and home sewing. By significantly speeding up the process the sewing machine reduced labor costs, which in turn reduced the cost of clothing. The result was that clothes once considered luxurious were now available to most people around the world. Take our quiz to test what you know about this brilliant invention.Just as the automobile was built around the idea of an internal combustion engine, the sewing machine was built around the idea of a looping stitch mechanism.
When you sew by hand you pass the needle through one side of the cloth, turn the needle, and then pass it through the other side.
Rather than pass the needle through one side and then the other, the sewing machine simply pushes the needle part of the way through, catches the resulting loop, and pulls the thread up onto the back of the cloth before repeating the process.
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You can use your dexterity to turn a needle around before pushing it through the other side of a cloth. To mechanize that process would be extremely difficult.
The eye of a sewing machine needle is located near the tip of the needle, unlike a standard needle where the eye is near the end.
The needle bar is what holds the needle as it moves up and down.
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To perform a chain stitch a machine will simply loop one piece of thread back onto itself. The process is quick, but the result is not very sturdy.
The presser foot keeps the cloth flat while the machine drives the needle up and down.
As the machine sews the cloth the feed dog pushes the cloth forward. This allows the machine to perform even stitches down the length of the cloth.
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The bobbin is nothing more than a spool of thread that you can find in the middle of the sewing machine's shuttle.
The value of a lock stitch is that it joins one thread to another, which produces a much stronger stitch than you can produce with a chain stitch.
As the needle begins to pull upward, the looping hook grabs the loop of thread produced by the downward stitch. The forward movement of the cloth combined with the upward stitch loops the thread onto itself.
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The shuttle hook catches the thread pushed into the cloth by the machine's needle. It then loops this thread around the thread of the bobbin, which creates a very sturdy stitch.
The motor of a sewing machine is attached to the drive shaft. At the end of the drive shaft of a conventional sewing machine lies the crank, which is what drives the needle up and down.
Not all fabrics are sewn with the same level of tension. The tension disc assembly allows you to adjust the tension as you need.
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Cloth will offer resistance based on its thickness. You want to compensate for that by tightening the thread when you sew a thin fabric, and loosening the thread when you sew a thick fabric.
Attaching the motor to a foot pedal allows you to control the speed of the stitching while keeping your hands free to attend to the cloth.
Because the feed dog is already moving the cloth forward as you sew, all you need is to move the mechanism from side to side and you will get a zigzag pattern.
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The modern high-end sewing machine, like many other modern machines, has a built in computer. These computers can control many kinds of motors, and can store numerous stitch patterns.
Some sewing machines can actually create highly intricate embroidery patterns! These machines have work areas that keep the fabric properly placed, and special sensors that communicate with the built-in computer.