American Women Revert To Sewing Machines To Allay High Apparel Cost

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 58, 21 June 1948, Page 7

American Women Revert To Sewing Machines To Allay High Apparel Cost

The American woman has returned to the sewing machine. Not since before the second quarter of the cenutry, when apparel manufacturing was first set up as a major industry, has there been such a boom in the sale of piece goods, patterns, sewing machines, and other home sewing materials. Today, according to news received by the New Zealand Wool Board, the womanly art of home is back in the limelight, with millions of new devotees throughout the nation. Reason for this increase in home sewing is today’s high cost for retail apparel. Another factor influencing home sewing is the number of new clothes that today’s style-conscious woman must buy. “Left overs” from previous seasons will not fashionably intermingle with the year’s new buys. Simplified patterns, and widespread advice and informative articles in fashion magazines and newspapers are further encouraging the back-to-the-sewing-machine' trend. In 1939, only 457,000 new sewing machines were manufactured in the United States, but as far back as seven months ago sewing machine manufacturers were shipping out a yearly rate of 650,000. Before the war, the nation’s pattern makers turned out an average 60 million units a year. In 1946, 120 such units were sold. Today pattern sales on the basis of physical volume are running 40 per cent above the 1946 figures.