# Sewing Machine > A thousand stitches a minute - Date: 1830 - Era: Industrial age - Domain: [Textiles & Everyday Life](https://lastcodex.org/en/domains/everyday/) - Rebuild stage: IV (Science & industry) - Difficulty: 4/5 - URL: https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/sewing-machine/ A sewing machine joins cloth with stitches formed mechanically, most often by locking an upper thread, carried by a needle with its eye near the point, around a lower thread held in a shuttle or bobbin case. Barthélemy Thimonnier's chain-stitch machine of 1830 was the first put to work in a factory; Elias Howe's lockstitch patent of 1846 and Isaac Singer's machine of 1851 made it an industrial and household tool. ![Sewing Machine · A thousand stitches a minute](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/plate.BQXykjOX_1lyeG3.webp) ## Legend 1. Spool of upper thread 2. Needle bar and needle 3. Presser foot 4. Feed dog 5. Shuttle with bobbin 6. Handwheel 7. Treadle and flywheel ## What it is A sewing machine pushes a threaded needle through cloth again and again, and at each pass ties the thread so the stitches hold. Its mechanism repeats the same few movements: the needle goes down and up, a hook or shuttle catches the thread underneath, and the cloth moves on by one stitch. Most machines make a lockstitch, in which two threads, one from above and one from below, are locked together in the middle of the cloth. The typical machine of the 1860s to 1880s, the type that brought machine sewing into workshops and homes, was a cast-iron head on a treadle stand, with a straight needle and a boat-shaped shuttle. ## How it works ![A lockstitch seam in cross-section: an upper thread and a lower thread hook around each other between two layers of cloth](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v1.VBKBcqb0_Z2tDNs8.webp) *In a finished lockstitch, the upper and lower threads lock together between the layers of cloth.* The needle of a sewing machine has its eye close to the point, the opposite of a hand needle, and it is never let go: it stays clamped in its bar while its point and eye go through the cloth. It carries the upper thread down through the fabric and the hole in the needle plate. As it starts to rise, friction holds back some thread on the underside, and a small loop opens beside the needle. The pointed shuttle swings through that loop at this moment, carrying a small bobbin of lower thread inside it. The loop slides around the shuttle and off its back, so the upper thread now encircles the lower one. A take-up lever on the front of the machine then pulls the upper thread tight, and the crossing point is drawn up into the middle of the cloth. Tension springs on both threads decide where that crossing sits: if one thread is too tight, the knot shows on one face. ![A boat-shaped shuttle with its bobbin of thread inside, and the bobbin shown alone beside it](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v2.Cym2-RYy_12oIW4.webp) *The boat shuttle holds the bobbin of lower thread; the thread leaves through a hole in its side, where a small spring, not drawn here, sets its tension.* Between stitches the cloth has to move. A presser foot holds it down on a small toothed bar, the feed dog, which rises through slots in the needle plate, pushes the cloth back by one stitch length and drops away again. The same main shaft that drives the needle bar through a crank drives the shuttle and the feed from underneath, so all three stay in time. On a treadle machine the feet rock a broad iron treadle, a rod turns a heavy flywheel, and a leather belt carries the motion up to the handwheel on the arm. The older single-thread chain stitch needs no lower thread. In Thimonnier's machine a hooked needle pulled each new loop up through the one before; later single-thread chain-stitch machines use an eyed needle and a looper underneath that holds each loop for the next stitch. Chain stitch is quick, but if the thread end at the finishing end of the seam is pulled, the whole seam can unravel. ## How to build it A working sewing machine needs hardened needles, cams and close-fitting parts cut in a machine shop. A large model on a simple frame shows how the two threads of a lockstitch interlock. **Make the frame.** Stretch a piece of loose-weave hessian over a picture frame or an embroidery hoop and fix it at a comfortable height, with room to reach underneath. **Make the needle.** Take a wooden dowel about 30 cm long and 8 mm thick, sharpen one end to a blunt point with a pencil sharpener, and drill a 4 mm hole about 1 cm from the point. Thread thick wool yarn of one colour through this eye, leaving a tail of about 15 cm. **Make the shuttle.** Wind about two metres of wool yarn of a second colour around a clothes peg or a small wooden shuttle. Tape the end of each yarn to the back of the frame before the first stitch so that it cannot pull through. **Sew.** One person pushes the needle down through the hessian until the eye is well below it, then lifts it a centimetre while holding the yarn above the cloth, so that a loop opens underneath. A second person passes the shuttle through the loop from front to back, unwinding yarn as needed. Pull the needle back up and tighten both yarns so the crossing sinks into the weave. Make the next stitch about 2 cm further along the cloth and repeat. Turn the frame over to see the two colours linked between the faces. > **Safety.** Use a vice or clamp when drilling and keep fingers away from the bit. On a real sewing machine, keep fingers clear of the needle while it moves, never reach under the presser foot while the machine runs, and switch off and unplug an electric machine before threading it, changing the needle or cleaning out lint. ## History and evolution ![A single-thread chain stitch seen from underneath the cloth: a row of flat loops, each held by the next, the last one free](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v3.BDEDz4sQ_2fPcpU.webp) *In a chain stitch each loop is held only by the next one. Nothing holds the last loop, so pulling the thread at that end undoes the seam loop after loop.* Several inventors patented sewing devices from the late eighteenth century onwards, but the first used in production was built by the French tailor Barthélemy Thimonnier, patented in 1830. It made a chain stitch with a barbed needle, imitating tambour embroidery. He soon had 80 machines making army clothing in a Paris workshop. A crowd of tailors who feared for their work broke in and destroyed them. Most accounts date the attack to 1831; some put it ten years later. Thimonnier died in 1857. In the United States, Elias Howe received patent 4,750 on 10 September 1846 for a lockstitch machine. It used a curved needle with the eye near the point and a shuttle carrying the second thread, and he claimed it could sew 250 stitches a minute. In 1851 Isaac Merritt Singer patented a machine whose straight needle moved up and down over a flat table, the arrangement still used today. Their patents overlapped, and the makers sued one another until 1856, when Howe, Singer, Wheeler and Wilson, and Grover and Baker pooled their patents in the Sewing Machine Combination, and Howe received a royalty on each machine sold. Singer's partner Edward Clark sold machines by instalments and through agents who went from door to door. In 1875 about 250,000 Singer machines were licensed, against about 104,000 for its nearest rival, Wheeler and Wilson. Rotary hooks took the place of the shuttle on faster machines, electric motors were fitted from the end of the nineteenth century, and clothing factories came to depend on rows of powered machines sewing at several thousand stitches a minute. ## Key figures - Thimonnier's machine: Patented in France in 1830; 80 machines sewing army clothing in Paris before tailors wrecked them - Howe's lockstitch patent: US patent 4,750, 10 September 1846; claimed 250 stitches a minute - Singer's patent: 12 August 1851: straight needle moving vertically over a flat table - Sewing Machine Combination: 1856, the first patent pool in American industry - Singer machines licensed in 1875: About 250,000 machines licensed, more than twice its nearest rival ## Requires - [Gears](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/gear/): Teeth that trade speed for force (c. 300 BCE) - [Iron Smelting](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/iron-smelting/): Wider adoption around 1200 BCE; ore, charcoal and a bloomery (c. 1,200 BCE) - [Weaving](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/weaving/): Threads crossed into cloth (c. 6,700 BCE) - [Steel](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/steel/): Iron with just enough carbon (c. 1,000 BCE) ## Sources - [Copy of Thimonnier's chain-stitch sewing machine, 1830](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co44718/copy-of-thimonniers-chain-stitch-sewing-machine-1830-sewing-machines), Science Museum Group - [Sewing Machine (Designs for Democracy)](https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/designs_for_democracy/symbols_and_substance/articles/sewing_machine_1.html), U.S. National Archives - [Isaac M. Singer (Scientist of the Day)](https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/isaac-m-singer/), Linda Hall Library - ['New Family' sewing machine (model 12/12k)](https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1351206), Victoria and Albert Museum - [The Invention of the Sewing Machine (Grace Rogers Cooper, Smithsonian Institution, 1968)](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32677/32677-h/32677-h.htm), Project Gutenberg - [Singer New Family sewing machine, 1865](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co44768/singer-new-family-sewing-machine-1865-1), Science Museum Group - [Instructions for using and adjusting the Singer 12K sewing machine](https://ismacs.net/needlebar/main/manuals/singer12k/), ISMACS International (Needlebar archive) - [Howe Machine Company instruction book](https://ismacs.net/needlebar/main/manuals/howe/index4.html), ISMACS International (Needlebar archive) - [Singer oscillating shuttle machines: retiming](https://www.singersewinginfo.co.uk/28timing), Singer Sewing Info - [Needles for domestic Singer sewing machines](https://www.singersewinginfo.co.uk/needles), Singer Sewing Info Fact-checked on 2026-10-12. --- The Last Codex · https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/sewing-machine/ · © The Last Codex. 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