One of my favorite things to do is search the Library of Congress photo archives. In simply looking up “sewing,” I came across a wealth of photos from all sorts of situations. While the first photo took my imagination (what is written on that notecard with the safety pins?), the caption of the second photo, “every soldier his own sewing society,” was the most poignant of them all.
Captions for the rest of the photos are noted at the bottom of each picture. I love how they show people in quiet moments (although the LOC archives also has lots of photos of people sewing in factories!) and working to fix something, whether it’s a uniform, a community or a country. That’s one of the best gifts of craft, I think, that we all belong to a long legacy and that every stitch we take has been done by thousands of individuals before us.
(And as for the last two, there were some pretty interesting photos I found along the way, too, including what has to be the hottest photo taken in 1875 and a puppy sewing.)
Miss Alice Pavl is shown sewing the thirty-sixth star on the suffrage ratification banner, the stars having been added from time to time as the various states ratified. (1920)
Legion of Loyal Women, Mrs. Mary Logan Tucker, Sewing on Bedding for Hospitals (1918)
Wife of Iowa corn farmer sewing choir robes for Methodist church. Greene County, Iowa (1940)
Philadelphia, Penna., Mar. 1941, girls engaged in knitting and the making of toy animals in the handicraft class of the St. Simon’s Youth Center of the National Youth Administration (1941)
Wife of migrant auto wrecker sewing seat cushion of wrecked auto, Corpus Christi, Texas (1939)
In the sewing class, a WPA (Work Projects Administration) project, at the FSA (Farm Security Administration) labor camp. Caldwell, Idaho (1941)
Lititz, Pennsylvania. The Moravian sewing circle quilts for anyone at one cent a yard of thread and donates the money to the church (1942)
Another button off (1875) (No, really, that was the caption.)
Patch-work (1914) (If you do one thing today, please click on this photo… It is a puppy sewing the pants of another puppy on its lap.)