Make Do and Mend

Wednesday was the day women devoted to mending and sewing. A housewife may have noticed missing buttons or worn spots while washing clothes on Monday or ironing them on Tuesday, so it made sense to repair them on Wednesday. This included darning stockings. A darning egg or darning mushroom, tools shaped out of wood or another hard material, was inserted into the toe or heel of the sock to provide a platform for making the repair.

In Never Done, Clara’s sewing basket contained a darning egg along with  “hooks and eyes, a pin cushion bristling with needles, four colors of heavy cotton thread, a skein of black wool yarn, a paper of straight pins, two sizes of scissors, and a thimble.”

Women also did most of their sewing on Wednesday. Prior to the first industrial revolution, clothing was made by hand, either by tailors or by women living at home. When women began working long days in factories they no longer had enough time or energy to sew clothing, therefore small clothing companies, pioneers of the clothing industry, began filling the need.

Employees of these companies still sewed by hand until the sewing machine was invented by an Englishman, Thomas Saint in 1790. Although this was before the power of electricity had been harnessed, cranking a wheel to make a needle go up and down was a huge time saver. Using a foot treadle was even more efficient.

Clara’s friend Phoebe “openly admired Clara’s shiny black sewing machine, one of the newer models that could be operated by a foot treadle as well as a hand-cranked wheel.”

In the remote parts of Colorado where Clara lived, fabric , yarn, and store-bought clothing were hard to find, making clothes and stockings worth more than the labor to mend them. Today’s clothing, most of it mass produced and cheaply made, is usually discarded  if it needs mending; although a few people still mend seams and put in zippers.

treadle Singer and darning egg