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Sewing   Listen
noun
Sewing  n.  
1.
The act or occupation of one who sews.
2.
That which is sewed with the needle.
Sewing horse (Harness making), a clamp, operated by the foot, for holding pieces of leather while being sewed.
Sewing machine, a machine for sewing or stitching.
Sewing press, or Sewing table (Bookbinding), a fixture or table having a frame in which are held the cords to which the back edges of folded sheets are sewed to form a book.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sewing" Quotes from Famous Books



... driven down, and the poles placed upon the forks; but sewing the cloth together for the covering was found to be so tedious a job that it was abandoned. The strips were drawn over the frame of the tent, and fastened by driving pins through it into the ground. Then it was found that there was only cloth enough to cover one tent. ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic

... myself, and I am very glad I didn't." He smiled as he reflected on his judicious wariness. "But, however," he continued, "I might as well finish up this business now. There is Rachel Doolittle. Who knows but she'd make a likely wife? Lyddy sot a good deal by her. She never had a quilting or a sewing bee but what nothing would do but she must give Rachel Doolittle an invite. Yes; I wonder I never decided on her before. She will be glad of a home sure enough, for she haves to live around, as ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... its choicest products, in the teeth of native competition, but for the tariff, the taxes, and the inflation, which double the cost of producing. The time may come, however, when we shall sell pianos at Paris, and watches in London, as we already do sewing-machines everywhere. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... however, Chauliac's anticipation of modern views is most surprising. He recognized that wounds of the intestines were surely fatal unless leakage could be prevented. Accordingly he suggested the opening of the abdomen and the sewing up of such intestinal wounds as could be located. He describes a method of suture for these cases and seems, like many another abdominal surgeon, even to have ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... of willow,—a weaving which went on in his mind far more actively than the twisting and plaiting of the osiers in his hands. Sometimes in the evenings, when work was done, and he sat in his comfortable easy chair by the fire watching Mary at her sewing and Angus talking earnestly to her, he became so absorbed in his own thoughts that he scarcely heard their voices, and often when they spoke to him, he started from a profound reverie, unconscious ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... space between the l. stitches, then crochet the two pieces together on the right side of the work, or sewing will do as well. If the tidy should require washing, let it now be done, and pressed between a double linen cloth, under a heavy weight; when dry, line it with coloured cambric, omitting the border; double it in half, and run ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown

... did not show herself very often now. She already wore a dress that reached to her ankles, attended a sewing class out of school-hours, and after her confirmation, which was to be a year next Easter she was to go "to business," as ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... wren-warbler (Prinia socialis) builds two distinct kinds of nest. One is just like that of the tailor-bird, being formed by sewing or cobbling together two, three, four or five leaves, and lining the cup thus formed with down, wool, cotton or other soft material. The second kind of nest is a woven one. This is a hollow ball with a hole in the ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... brought me to the court of Madrid, where as a provision and to avoid greater misfortunes, my parents placed me as seamstress in the service of a lady of quality, and I would have you know that for hemming and sewing I have never been surpassed by any all my life. My parents left me in service and returned to their own country, and a few years later went, no doubt, to heaven, for they were excellent good Catholic Christians. I was left an orphan with nothing but the miserable wages and trifling ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... League, and fell into comparative decay after the decay of the League, on the Oker, 140 m. SW. of Berlin; an irregularly built city, it has a cathedral, and manufactures textiles, leather, and sewing-machines. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... that I am going to criticise you. I am no judge of sewing,—never set a stitch in my life. It must be a dull way of spending time. Can't ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... discovered in a Parlor in a Fashionable Square. The Wife is busy sewing. The Husband is occupied running his eye, well drilled in all matters of domestic economy, over the housekeeping account of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... of those two years, a financial panic swept over the country, prostrating the great houses, and sending want and suffering into the attics—not homes, for they have none—of the poor sewing-women. The firm that employed her failed, and Fanny was thrown out of work. She went to her good friend the matron, who interested some 'benevolent' ladies in her behalf, and they procured her shirts to make at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... having completed her nest, sewing together the leaves by passing through them a cotton thread twisted by the creature herself, leaps from branch to branch to testify her happiness by a clear and merry note; and the Indian weaver[2], a still more ingenious artist, having woven its dwelling ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... to us cullud folks and he feeds us good. He kep' lots of hawgs, dat makes de meat. In de smokehouse am hung up meat enough for to feed de army, it looks like. We'uns have all de clothes we need and dey was made on de place. My mammy am de sewing woman and my pappy am de shoemaker. My work, for to nuss de ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... small conjuring tent was made by sticking some long green limber poles in the ground, and bending them over like bows until the other ends were also made fast in the earth. Then over these poles a skin tent, made by sewing a number of dressed deerskins together, was thrown. Taking his medicine bag and magic drum into this tent, the conjurer disappeared. Soon the monotonous drumming began. In addition there were heard the barks and howls and cries of nearly all the animals of the forest and prairies. ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... best not to mention Danny's proposed visit to their mother, for they knew that she would be fretting about his clothes, and would be sitting up mending and sewing for him when she should be sleeping. So they resolved ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... very sober. She came into the sitting-room holding her packages, and found her mother and Mrs. Carleton busy with their sewing, while her father was at his desk writing. She repeated Mr. Waite's message, and her father ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis

... dress to be put on. Mrs. Bilter took eager pleasure in dressing her pretty sister in the daintiest of gowns. When she looked up she saw her husband coming through the gate for his noon dinner. She put down her sewing and moved to ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern

... was tired, they could come for her when they were ready to go. She could hear their voices around her until she called them at supper time. When they came to her she stood waiting on the trail, the sewing in one hand, the violin in the other. Elnora became very white, but followed the trail without a word. Philip, unable to see a woman carry a heavier load than he, reached for the instrument. Mrs. Comstock shook her head. She carried the violin home, took it into her room and closed the door. ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... trusted; less trustworthy than oxen; for conscientiousness a turn-spit dog excels him. Hence these thousand new inventions—carding machines, horseshoe machines, tunnel-boring machines, reaping machines, apple-paring machines, boot-blacking machines, sewing machines, shaving machines, run-of-errand machines, dumb-waiter machines, and the Lord-only-knows-what machines; all of which announce the era when that refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly prior to which glorious ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... mother's arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe. On another bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another woman, with thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on, a man, his clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep, with head in the lap of a woman, not more than twenty-five ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... did sewing, one looked after the linen for one of the dormitories, another darned hose and repaired lingerie. Dr. Frances Milroth's own personal secretary was a junior who was working her way through Ardmore and was taking a high mark, too, in ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson

... attendants. Behind St. Elizabeth, we have a view into the interior of her house, through arcades richly sculptured; and within, Zacharias is reading, and the handmaids of Elizabeth, are spinning and sewing. This elegant fresco was ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... like to see the man she would fancy," answered his wife, knitting away busily on a purse for some sewing society. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... drawing the hops, a thunderstorm bursts, and the blue lightning lights up the red cone without, blue as the sulphur flames creeping over the charcoal within. It is lonely work for him in the storm. By day he has many little things to do between the greater labours, to make the pockets (or sacks) by sewing the sackcloth, or to mark the name of the farmer and the date with stencil plates. For sewing up the mouth of the pocket when filled there is a peculiar kind of string used; you may see it hanging up in any of the country 'stores;' they are not shops, but stores of miscellaneous articles. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... Pandemonium can't crush either! Ten to one, Pauline will lose her wits too, and be as hard to manage as Guy." Moody and perplexed, she walked on to the dining room. Beulah had fallen into a heavy slumber of exhaustion, and it was late in the day when she again unclosed her eyes. Harriet sat sewing near her, but soon perceived that she was awake, and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... the funeral the Arnolds called at the residence of Mrs. Morton, whose husband had died more than a year before. She was obliged to take in plain sewing, and when she could do so, she gave occasional lessons in French to eke out a livelihood for herself and child. A very short interview resulted in Mrs. Arnold persuading the widow to take a permanent situation with her, as her seamstress. And from that date until ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw

... first place, we have to be informed of the false version of these incidents which is current in the little town, and on which Bernick's moral and commercial prestige is built up. What device, then, does Ibsen adopt to this end? He introduces a "sewing-bee" of tattling women, one of whom happens to be a stranger to the town, and unfamiliar with its gossip. Into her willing ear the others pour the popular version of the Bernick story; and, this impartment effected, the group of gossips disappears, to be heard ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... Harvester Company, which has made and promoted the great agricultural inventions of the world; the Singer Sewing-Machine Company, that spreads its manufactures over the earth, and brings back the returns to the United States; all American motor-car companies, all American tobacco interests, and, in fact, all foreign companies, are boycotted, or barred, or worked against, ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron

... III: JUNIOR GRADE Correlations 42 Arithmetic, geography, nature study, hygiene, physical training, composition, spelling, manual training, art, sewing 45 ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education

... sewing, stocking knitting, and the like, are arts which have never been practised in the Indian tribes generally. After the revolutionary war, I learned to sew, so that I could make my own clothing after a poor fashion; but ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... members of that class. They had left her the frail and beautiful body, conspicuously useless and dependent; they had left her all the leisure-class impulses and cravings, all the leisure-class impotences and futilities to contend with. They had taught her nothing about cooking, nothing about sewing, nothing about babies, nothing about money; they had taught her only the leisure-class dream of "love in a cottage"—and she had run away with a poor poet to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... caught in the Felucca. As soon as I had got clear of these, by means of changing my clothes and linen, I proceeded to furnish the chamber I had chosen. I made a good mattress with my waistcoats and shirts; my napkins I converted, by sewing them together, into sheets; my robe de chambre into a counterpane; and my cloak into a pillow. I made myself a seat with one of my trunks laid flat, and a table with the other. I took out some writing paper and an inkstand, and distributed, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... request from W. T. Vankirk, George W. Peck presented the Rock County Agricultural Society with a sewing machine, to be given to the "boss combination girl" of Rock County. With the machine he sent the following letter, which explains his meaning of a ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... chain armour, steel helmets, hundreds of battle flags, and thousands of native spears, swords, and shields. Besides these the collection comprised ivory, percussion caps, lead, copper, and bronze, looms, pianos, sewing machines, boilers, steam engines, agricultural implements, ostrich feathers, wooden and iron bedsteads, paints, India rubber, leather water bottles, clothes, three state coaches, and an American buggy. There were also a modern smithy, where gunpowder, shell, bullets, ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... days of Hester Prynne they published a faithless wife by sewing a scarlet "A" upon the bosom of her dress. Nowadays the word is pronounced "co-respondent," and it may be affixed to any woman's name by any newspaper, or any plaintiff in a ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... to Georgiana I cannot always be darting in and out of Mrs. Cobb's front door like a swallow through a barn. Neither can I talk freely to Georgiana—with her up at the window and me down on the ground—when I wish to breathe into her ear the things that I must utter or die. Besides, the sewing-girl whom Georgiana has engaged is nearly always there. So that as I was in the act of trimming a long slender stick, it occurred to me that I might make use of this to elevate any little notes that I might wish to write over the garden fence up to ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen

... must down into the furnace to make cannon; all Church-plate into the mint to make money. Also behold the fair swan-bevies of Citoyennes that have alighted in Churches, and sit there with swan-neck,—sewing tents and regimentals! Nor are Patriotic Gifts wanting, from those that have aught left; nor stingily given: the fair Villaumes, mother and daughter, Milliners in the Rue St.-Martin, give 'a silver thimble, and a coin of fifteen sous (sevenpence halfpenny),' ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... worst of it," says Sadie. "She seems to live for her work. Goodness knows how early she's up and at it in the morning, and at night I have to drive her out of the sewing room!" ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... when a powerful oil lamp stood on the middle of the table. The harsh light fell on the garden; cut straight across the lawn; lit up a child's bucket and a purple aster and reached the hedge. Mrs. Flanders had left her sewing on the table. There were her large reels of white cotton and her steel spectacles; her needle-case; her brown wool wound round an old postcard. There were the bulrushes and the Strand magazines; and the linoleum sandy from the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... the piazza with some light sewing when they came up, and to Mr. Follet's excited introduction of Mr. Langly she made polite but unrecognizing acknowledgment, and her husband was too impatient to ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins

... equivalent to the distance across a twenty-five-cent piece, and a yard is from nose to thumb, as far as you can reach. Needlework is good for all of us; it rests and calms the mind. You can think peacefully over all the worries of Europe whilst you are stitching. Sewing generally solves all the ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... 28th—we encountered a great deal of entangled vegetation, many liane and thorns, which completely finished up my lower garments. My coat also, which was of similar material, was beginning to give signs of wear and tear, the sewing of the sleeves and at the back having ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... features of my wife. There was an expression of anxiety in her countenance, which, amid all her previous sufferings, I had never seen there before. She did not complain; but sometimes, when we sat alone together, I reading, perhaps, and she sewing, she would drop her work in her lap, and sigh suddenly and deeply, as if the first shadows of the upgathering gloom were beginning to cloud her young and innocent spirit, and force her apprehensions into utterance. This did not escape me, but I read its signification, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... sleigh road. The sun was throwing down the graceful lines of elm twigs on path and snowdrift. The snow lawns in front of the village houses were pure and bright; little children played in them with tiny sledge and snow spade, often under the watchful eye of a mother who sat sewing behind the window pane. Now and then sleighs passed on the central road with a cheerful ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... laid it here on the sewing-machine. Gee! the only way for a fellow to keep his hat round this joint is to sit ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... a bitter folk," said Barneveld as he went to bed. "I have nothing good to expect of them." Next day was occupied in sewing up and concealing his papers, including a long account of his examination, with the questions and answers, in his Spanish arm-chair. Next day van der Meulen said to the servant, "I will bet you a hundred florins that you'll not be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... caves and other queer places, and robbing right and left (result of reading too many dime novels; heard the Professor say so this morning). Been 'round here too; stole Uncle Jeff's calf day before yesterday; and his grandmother goes to sewing society to-morrow night." ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... speech was a lengthy one, and lengthy speeches mostly exhausted Mr. Stuart. He lay back, watching his fair relative as she sat sewing near, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... at home sewing for the poor?" demanded a pleasant voice over their shoulders. The girls wheeled about to smile into the eyes of Father Martin. A tall spare old man, with enormous glasses on his twinkling blue eyes, spots and dust on his priestly black, and a few teeth missing from his kindly, big, homely ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... sewing tow inside pieces of linen, or folding linen and sewing the pieces together. They are used to keep off pressure from parts such as that caused ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... chosen by Luka from a pile in the hut, were already prepared by having fat rubbed into them. The hair was left on them, as that would come inside. The bad skins had been taken off, the others cut to fit, and now only required sewing into their places. As a matter of course Godfrey and Luka took their meals with the Ostjaks and greatly enjoyed the change of diet. They gladdened the hearts of their hosts by producing a packet of tea, of which a handful was poured into a pot of water boiling over the ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... men and women have been at work to get each soldier ready for the field. He has boots, clothes, and equipments. The tanner, currier, shoemaker, the manufacturer, with his swift-flying shuttles, the operator tending his looms and spinning-jennies, the tailor with his sewing-machines, the gunsmith, the harness-maker, the blacksmith,—all trades and occupations have been employed. There are saddles, bridles, knapsacks, canteens, dippers, plates, knives, stoves, kettles, tents, blankets, medicines, drums, swords, pistols, guns, cannon, powder, percussion-caps, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... a small hall on the next floor, a woman sat before her sewing-machine, bending so close to her work that she did not see the tall form, which paused before her, until a hand was laid on the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... of the place was of extreme comfort. The bare description of furniture conveys nothing, but the comfort was there and showed out in the odds and ends of family possessions which were in evidence everywhere—the grandfather's clock, the sewing-machine, the quaint old oil-lamps upon the mantel-board over the place where the fire should have been but was not; the soft hangings and curious old family pictures and discoloured engravings; the perfect femininity of the room. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... do if we do meet them,' Charlie joined in, 'is to pretend that we are deaf and dumb. We are deaf and dumb as far as Chinese is concerned. And, now, if you will give me that pigtail, I will try to sew it to this skull-cap. I've never yet tried sewing with a pin, and I fancy that it won't ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... look quite at home. I remember my first trip; it was in New England, and I was selling sewing-machine needles. Mr. Hopsby took me around a corner before I started and, presenting me with a nail-puller, told me he was afraid he was doing wrong to send me out, I was so young; but that I was to remember that the only way to prosperity was in getting orders. It hadn't ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... Coventry your stomachs, never could perceive how the pudding was a poem to the cobbler and his wife,—how a very actual sense of the live goodness of Jesus was in it,—how its spicy steam contained all the cordial cheer and jollity they had missed in meaningless days of the year. Then she brought her sewing-chair, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... did not light the little rag-lamp which she and Jane sometimes sat by with their belated sewing or darning if they had not kept the hearth-fire burning. She went to bed in the dark, and slept with the work-weariness which keeps the ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... found admission by means of a window looking out upon the roofs to the rear of the house. The only artificial light consisted of a solitary candle placed on the table, at the far end of which sat a woman engaged in sewing. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... military band came down and gave us an hour's concert on the promenade deck. We sat about under the awnings with our novels or our sewing or our attention. At the end they played the "Star Spangled Banner," and we all stood up, the soldiers at attention, hat on breast. One of the passengers refused to take off his hat, so that we had something to gossip about for ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... Perhaps because he might see there one slender shadow, still arranging flowers, or bending with iris-grace above the goldfish in his pond. But wherever he rest, sometime in the silent hours he must see the same soundless presence near his pillow,—sewing, smoothing, softly seeming to make beautiful the robes he once put on only to betray. And at other times—in the busiest moments of his busy life—the clamor of the great shop dies; the ideographs of his ledger dim and vanish; and a plaintive little voice, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... she nibbled her thread with white teeth, and held up what she had been sewing to view the effect of a bow of riband, with her head very much on one side. And I inwardly wondered that she should spend so much care upon such frippery—all senseless ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... success, than the London one it followed, was not without effect on the industry and art-culture of France. The United States also showed that they had not been idle. Our fabrics of vulcanized rubber and sewing-machines were boons to Europe she has not been slow to seize. The latter are now sold in England, with trifling modifications and new trademarks, at from one-third to one-half the price our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... her bower door, Sewing her silken seam; She heard a note in Elmond's wood, And wished ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)

... opinion, not only as to details, but as to principles. Each inventor has added to, or altered, the original idea of evolution, until it has been burdened with more improvements and new patents than the sewing machine; only the evolutionary improvements bid fair to improve the theory out of existence. We have seen M. Tremaux, with the autochthonic Athenians, deriving the powers of improvement of plants and animals from ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... ever be able to do that down hear for the time is getting worse evry day. I am going to ask if you peple hear could aid me in geting over her in Chicago and seeking out a position of some kind. I can also do plain sewing. Please good peple dont refuse to help me out in my trouble for I am in gret need of help God will bless you. I am going to do my very best after I get over here if God spair me to get work I will pay the expance back. Do try to do the best you can for me, with many thanks ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... belonged to him, as you might say. Besides I had to cut the grass to my sisters could play tennis with Johnny Wade—honest, that fellow is there all the time. He's got a machine, but I never saw it. I guess maybe it's a sewing machine, hey? ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... night she sat up in her little attic room, after everybody else was in bed, mending, in a poor fashion, a rent in the faded "best frock," and sewing a bit of cotton lace in the neck thereof that she had picked out of the ragbag, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... important affairs of his own. During this stay at Florence and in order to lose no time, he painted for the Granfigliazzi lung' Arno, between their houses and the ponte alle Carraia in a small tabernacle on one side, Our Lady seated sewing, to whom a clothed child who is seated, is offering a bird, done with such care that although it is small it merits no less praise than the more ambitious ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... Aunt Susan sat by the window sewing. She looked actually lovely, or at least Ethel thought so, and longed for Grandmamma to see the change that she had wrought. As she gazed upon the old lady she said to herself: "Perhaps, it is because I'm ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson

... witnesses, passed his fingers along the collar, the cuffs, and all the seams of the coat and trousers, obviously looking for something—money, of course. He didn't even hide from Mitya his suspicion that he was capable of sewing money ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... rehabilitate the Drama, or write the Greatest Novel; illustrators, journalists, critics, painters, types in velvet coats, flowing ties, flowing locks, and astonishing hats, sculptors, makers of exquisite bits of craftsmanship, models, masters, singers of sorts, actors and actresses, sewing-girls, frightful old concierges; students from the four corners of the earth driven hither by the four winds of heaven, came and went in the devil-may-care wake of Stocks and the Checkleighs and disported themselves before the reflective and appreciative eyes of Peter Champneys. These gay Bohemians ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... him out after we got home he was frantic, and jumped on the mantel, tables, and chairs, scattering things right and left. Finally he started to run up a lace window curtain back of the sewing machine. On top of the machine was a plate of warm cookies that Charlie had just brought to me, and getting a sniff of those the squirrel stopped instantly, hesitated just a second, and then over he jumped, took a cookie with his paws and afterwards held it with his ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... loom; a Frenchman named Jacquard and an Englishman named Arkwright made men warm for their work in winter. Garments within the reach of the poor man in forest and factory, field and mine, means the cotton gin, and that gin is the gift of an American. The sewing machine changed woman's position, but the world owes that ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... always rather liked his wife. I—always—rather—liked—her. But somehow, as we went on through lunch, and then on after that, I didn't like her quite so much. Not—quite—so—much. I don't know. Have you ever seen a woman unpicking a bit of sewing? Always looks rather angry with it, I suppose because it's got to be unpicked. They sort of flip the threads out, as much as to say, 'Come out of it, drat you. That's you, drat you.' Well, that was the way she spoke to old Sabre. Sort of snipped off the end of ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... smoke-blackened metal plate over which those mystics passed who had to walk through fire, there lay plenty of charcoal, and yonder hung robes of every description. The next moment she had thrown off her own, in order to blacken her glistening white limbs and her face with soot. Among the sewing materials which the lady Euryale had laid beside the scrolls was a pair of scissors. These the girl seized, and with quick, remorseless hand cut off the long, thick locks that were her brother's and her lover's delight. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... behind her counter, sorting silks. Not rich piece silks that are made into gowns; Mrs. Duff's shop did not aspire to that luxurious class of goods; but humble skeins of mixed sewing-silks, that were kept tied up in a piece of wash-leather. Mrs. Duff's head and a customer's head were brought together over the bundle, endeavouring to fix upon a skein of a particular shade, by the help of the one ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... made a wooden one from heavy sinking timber, but a stalwart ranchman coming along, one day, brought a boat anchor with him which, he said, had been used by his slaves as a pot-hook. "But now that they are free and away," said he, "I have no further use for the crooked thing." A sewing-machine, which had served to stitch the sails together, was coveted by him, and was of no further use to us; in exchange for this the prized anchor was readily secured, the owner of it leaving us some boot into the bargain. Things working thus in our ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... MERCHANT TAILOR, he sat down and began with the needle and thread he had found in the chest, to mend the coat which his master had so shockingly torn. He was called off from his work, but on returning to it, what a wonderful sight met his eyes! The needle was sewing industriously away, without being touched by any one; it took fine, elegant stitches, such as Labakan himself had never made even in ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... and commodious hospital; a printing office with presses capable of turning out a high order of typography; an asylum for lepers; a rescue-home for unfortunate girls; normal classes for teachers and for nurses; training in sewing, embroidery, and weaving; and many another sort of Christian service, including the work of the factory and the farm. Every species of cooking on the premises, and all the care of the rooms and houses, is done ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... in her room sewing, with a good deal of cut-out linen round her. She diligently passed her needle through the stiff cloth, sometimes stretching the seam on her knee, smoothing it with her thimble, and looking doubtfully to see whether each individual stitch was small and even. Then that rapid footstep was heard in ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... young ladies at the Manor House did not get their dresses from London, a dressmaker came from Brighton to help them, and all together they sat sewing and chattering in the work-room. Maggie would take a bow or a flower, and moving it quickly, guided by the instinct of a bird building its nest, would find the place where it decorated the hat or bonnet best. Neither Sally nor Grace could do this, nor could they ...
— Spring Days • George Moore

... the Sewing Machine Girl. In the flesh. And walking across the slippery dance floor with her French heeled patent leathers wiggling under her. Bertha's the doodles. This is the way she stood at the piano at Sadie's party. This is the way she smiled at the errand boys and counter jumpers at Sadie's party. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... had no shells to open whilst the divers were absent, I filled in my time by sewing sails, which Jensen himself would cut to the required shape—and reading, &c. My library consisted of only five books—a copy of the Bible, and a four-volume medical work in English by Bell, which I had purchased at Singapore. I made quite a study of ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... I felt very much worse again and said to her: "I do believe I've been poisoned by the lobster mayonnaise at the Mansion House last night;" she simply replied, without taking her eyes from her sewing: "Champagne never did agree with you." I felt irritated, and said: "What nonsense you talk; I only had a glass and a half, and you know as well as I do—" Before I could complete the sentence she bounced out of the room. I sat over an hour waiting for her to return; but as she did not, ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... candles, and civil defense instructions, some personal convenience items could be brought into the home shelter if space permits. These might include books and magazines, writing materials, a clock and calendar, playing cards and hobby materials, a sewing kit, and toiletries such as toothbrushes, cosmetics, and ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense

... world,—indeed, they are said with some degree of probability to have believed themselves to be the only people in the world,—I was not a little delighted to see how well necessity had taught them to clothe themselves; and the skill of the women was apparent in the sewing, and in one case tasteful ornamental work ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... up to twenty-five and twenty-eight, had an affaire with a sartorella; and I may safely assert, without being malicious, that she was not wont to give her heart—if we may call it so—gratis. She was rather a nuisance, because there was always some mending or sewing to be done. She generally turned the servants' heads by telling them that she was going to be married to a real graf (count) as soon as he was independent of his parents—a sort of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid over again, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... steep black alleys. I do not talk much to these people; I fear my illusions being dispelled. At the corner of a street, opposite Francesco di Giorgio's beautiful little portico, is a great blue and red advertisement, representing an angel descending to crown Elias Howe, on account of his sewing-machines; and the clerks of the Vice-Prefecture, who dine at the place where I get my dinner, yell politics, Minghetti, Cairoli, Tunis, ironclads, &c., at each other, and sing snatches of La Fille de Mme. Angot, which I imagine they have ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... dyeing, sewing, &c. may easily be acquired, those who exercise them are not considered in Africa as following any particular profession; for almost every slave can weave, and every boy can sew. The only artists which are distinctly acknowledged as such by the Negroes, and who value ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... the steps and talked about the portion of the world inhabited by me, while she sat sewing in the dull light that straggled out from the ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... ball, and the 'two bears,' as the strange figures hammering on an anvil in the top left-hand corner are called, are made by hand. The latter comes all the way from a little village in Austria, and the figures are cut out by the villagers in their homes, before being fastened together. The sewing-machine is one of the most popular toys: thousands of gross of these have been sold, according to Messrs. Lawrence, of Houndsditch, who very kindly gave us some facts about this business. A 'gross' ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... up some sewing, and, having spoken, went on with it. Mutimer kept his eyes fixed upon her. His suspicions never resisted a direct word from Adela's lips, though other feelings might exasperate him. What he had just heard he believed ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... unceasingly, as if it could not rest. It saw hardly anything, for all it had eyes; often it stood straight up in the air, feeling about for something to take hold of; it looked like a stump of green thread sewing a seam with long stitches along the branch. By evening, perhaps, it would have ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun

... bright afternoon that little gift made in that little room! How much faster Mary's fingers flew the livelong day as she sat sewing by her mother! and Mrs. Stephens, in the happiness of her child, almost forgot that she had a headache, and thought, as she sipped her evening cup of tea, that she felt stronger than she had done for ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... difficult situation. But this was the most difficult proposition that she had ever come up against. When her father died and her mother was left with the little house and the three younger children to support in a small country village, and only plain sewing and now and then a boarder to eke out a living for them all, she had sought and found, through a summer visitor who had taught her Sunday school class for a few weeks, a good position in this big Eastern city. She had made ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... before the padres were driven away, that it seemed to me like a city. There were more than two thousand Indians, and all worked busily from morning until night, the men plowing and planting in the fields, or making adobes for building houses, and the women weaving and sewing and cooking. Every one had something to do, and knew it must be done, and all were willing and glad to do it; for we all dearly loved the padre, he was so good, and it was a happiness to do what ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... Sunday, the dies solis, the first day of the week which the sun opens in glory, the day of devotion and joy. The consequence of this fraud is that "Sabbath-breaking," or "the desecration of the Sabbath," that is, the slightest occupation, whether of business or pleasure, all games, music, sewing, worldly books, are on Sundays looked upon as great sins. Surely the ordinary man must believe that if, as his spiritual guides impress upon him, he is only constant in "a strict observance of the holy Sabbath," and is "a regular attendant ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... passageways were dug connecting directly with the dog huts. Ample room was thus at our disposal without the need on our part of furnishing building material. We had workshops, a blacksmith shop, a room for sewing, one for packing, a storage room for coal, wood, and oil, a room for regular baths and one for steam baths. The winter might be as cold and stormy as it would; it could ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... girls undertaking the housework and the boys the outside "chores." Apparently from all I hear my predecessor was a strict disciplinarian, an economical manager, an expert needlewoman, and everything I should be and am not. The sewing simply appalls me! I confess that stitching for three dozen children of all sizes had not entered into my calculations as one of the duties of a "missionary"! Yet of course I realize they must be clad as well as taught. What a pity that the climate will not allow of a simple loin cloth and ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... to go with them except Hamish, and he was a cripple, and not so well as usual this winter, and though the girls were quite able to take care of themselves, they had little pleasure in going alone. So Angus Dhu's girls used to take their knitting and their sewing to the other house, and they all amused themselves in the innocent, old-fashioned ways of ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson

... well shielded from the draughts which raged through the building in winter; and here Sergeant Archelaus had lit a fire to-night and sat before it, sewing an artilleryman's stripe upon the ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... him in his studio and keep him for ransom. Some one held the horse, and the two men went up to the sixth floor and into Carstairs's studio, where they discovered pretty Mrs. Carstairs in the act of sewing a new collar-band on one of her husband's old shirts. She went on at this while the railroad king, who seemed a very simple, kindly old gentleman, wandered around the studio and turned over the pictures, but made no comment. It had been a very cold drive, ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis

... This sewing done, they put a large stone under each end of the bark construction, causing it to sag from the middle in either direction into the curve suitable for a canoe. The gunwale which they had constructed previously was now fitted into the bark, and the bark was stitched tightly to it, both at top ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... piously strained In this unrigid Refuge for helplessness. Cheeriness, confidence, mirth Seemed to reign in these child-crowded rooms—in these wards where the aged, whose birth Dated well-nigh a century back, whether sewing, or smoking, or prone On the pallet of sickness, all smiled, and no soul seemed forlorn or alone. How they sang, those close clustering toddlers, their curly heads tier above tier, With never a trace of restraint, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various

... Kid and Lamb Gloves, black and white Bone Lace, Capuchin Silk, and Fringe, Gartering, Silk and Cotton Laces, stript Gingham, yellow Canvas, Diaper, Damask Table Cloths and Napkins, Bedtick, 7-8th Garlix, Soletare Necklaces and Earings, Tapes, Womens Russel Shoes, sewing Silk, Nutmegs, Pepper, Looking Glasses, Ticklinburg, English and Russia Duck, Allum, Copperas and Brimstone, German Steel, Bar Lead, English and India Taffety, Grograms, English and India Damasks, Padusoys, Lutestrings, black and white Sattin, rich Brocade, Gauze Caps, and Ruffles, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... January 10, 1881, with eleven members, and its present enrollment is 235. It has sustained a sewing-school, in which over 400 girls have been taught. It held night schools until night schools were opened in the public schools, and it now sustains a kindergarten. It has sustained various branches of missionary, temperance and charitable work. ...
— American Missionary, Vol. 45, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... No child under the age of sixteen years shall be employed, permitted or suffered to work at any of the following occupations or any of the following positions: (1) adjusting any belt to any machinery; (2) sewing or lacing machine belts in any workshop or factory; (3) oiling, wiping or cleaning machinery or assisting therein; (4) operating or assisting in operating any of the following machines (a) circular or band saws; (b) ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous

... she explained. "All the costly needlework of the shops means nothing to me alongside of my own work on my own designs. Dick used to fret at my sewing. He's all for efficiency, you know, elimination of waste energy and such things. He thought sewing was a wasting of time. Peasants could be hired for a song to do what I was doing. But I succeeded in making my viewpoint ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... ploughing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, sifting, grinding, riddling, kneading, baking, shearing wool, whitening, carding, dyeing, spinning, warping, making two spools, weaving two threads, taking out two threads, twisting, loosing, sewing two stitches, tearing thread for two sewings, hunting the gazelle, slaughtering, skinning, salting, curing its skin, tanning, cutting up, writing two letters, erasing to write two letters, building, demolishing, ...
— Hebrew Literature

... lately. So Miss Leaf kept contentedly to the c, a, t, cat, and d, o, g, dog, of the little butchers and bakers, as Miss Selina, who taught only sewing, and came into the school-room but little during the day, scornfully termed them. The higher branches such as they were, she left gradually to Hilary, who, of late, possibly out of sympathy with a friend of hers, had begun to show an actual gift ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... says about idle hands." He crossed one leg and leaned back as though for a comfortable chat. "No, you come and see me, Murdock, and state how much you've been damaged, and we'll see what we can do. Why, these little lawyers love to name things big. They'd call a sewing circle a riot if one of the members ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... no uncommon thing in these sweatshops for men to sit bent over a sewing-machine continuously from eleven to fifteen hours a day in July weather, operating a sewing-machine by foot-power, and often so driven that they could not stop for lunch. The seasonal character of the ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London

... used by the Yarmouth herring busses were made in breadths of six feet. The necessary depth was obtained by sewing together successive breadths, and each breadth was therefore ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various

... the ocean, Rising with smutted walls and blackened towers; The vaporetto, with erratic motion, Muddies the waters with its carbon-showers. And such she is! Progress's dismal dowers Have spoilt the picture; now the eye may feast On garish signs and posters. Gracious powers! Sewing-machines and hair-washes at least Might spare the Grand Canal. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various

... as we see, is totally unlike the demure Miss Boothby. They are both charming children; but, while Penelope would love to nestle in her mother's arms, Miss Bowles would dance coyly away. While Penelope would sit in doors by the hour, contented with her sewing, Miss Bowles would be skipping about the park like a little hoyden. The picture of Miss Bowles is, therefore, full of action; both child and dog pause only an instant, caught, as it were, in the midst of their play. The attitude ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... to nothing. He took her his favourite books, but—with the exception of an occasional novel—Louise was no reader. In those he brought her, she seldom advanced further than the first few pages; and she could sit for an hour without turning a leaf. He had never seen her with a piece of sewing or any such feminine employment in her hands. Nor did she spend time on her person; as a rule, he found her in her dressing-gown. He had to give up trying to influence her, and to become reconciled to the fact that she chose to live ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... domain, and with a little aid from others had opened a Sunday-school and simple Sunday services in the heart of it. A branch of the Women's Mission was established in the same spot, and soon women were "putting by" their pence and sewing quietly round the lady superintendent as she read to them the stories ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... afternoons we had a half-holiday on board. It was called "Make-and-Mend-Clothes Day." The upper decks belonged to the crew that afternoon, and every conceivable kind of activity was in operation. It looked something like an Irish fair. It was a day on which most men wrote home; but there were sewing, boxing, fencing, and on this afternoon at least almost every man on the ship worked at his hobby. My hobby at this time was mathematics and I could not do that in the crowd, but on Thursday afternoons I rather enjoyed watching ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... all the rudeness of which she was capable. "Let those who wish associate with Miss Ashton," she would often say to her companions; "but I am thankful that I have been better taught at home than to make a companion of a girl whose mother is obliged to take in sewing to pay her school bills." These and other remarks equally malicious were daily made by Miss Carlton; and I am sorry that she soon found others in the school who were weak enough to be influenced by her also to treat Emma with coldness and contempt. Emma could ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell

... Mary could not understand, and Papa left off teasing and flying into tempers and looking like Jehovah and walking by himself in the cool of the evening. He followed Mamma about the garden. He hung over her chair, like Mark, as she sat sewing. You came upon him suddenly on the stairs and in the passages, and he would look at you as if you were not there, and say, "Where's your mother? Go and tell her I want her." And Mamma would put away her trowel and her big leather gloves and go to him. She would sit for hours in the library ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... wealth, the merchandise they had in small ventures, utterly regardless of the elements which threatened them. The miser, thinking of the gold contained in his coffers, hastening to put it in a place of safety, either by sewing it into the lining of his clothes, or by cutting out for it a place in the waistband of his trousers. The smuggler was tearing his hair at not being able to save a chest of contraband which he had secretly got on board, and with which he had hoped to have gained ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... wide to their various homes, Nita had remained at the convent, roaming at will through the deserted class-room and beautiful grounds. She was the pet and darling of the entire community. In the long summer afternoons when the nuns carried their sewing out to the orchard behind the house, or to the pine grove on the hill, where one could obtain such a lovely view of the river, Nita would flit about amongst them like a veritable woodland fairy. Her snatches of song and merry laughter made sylvan echoes ring and brought smiles ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams

... at 'em, but I told him what the matter was, and that he needn't fix up his peeking contrivances on my account,—anyhow she's a nice young woman as ever lived, and as industrious with that pen of hers as if she was at work with a sewing-machine,—and there ain't much difference, for that matter, between sewing on shirts and writing on stories,—one way you work with your foot, and the other way you work with your fingers, but I rather guess there's more headache in the stories ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... with a shock of delight that made his heart throb, he tried to picture this beautiful fair creature sitting over there in that very chair by the side of the fire, her head bent down over her sewing, the warm light of the lamp touching the tender curve of her cheek. And when she lifted her head to speak to him—and when her large and lambent eyes met his—surely Fionaghal, the fair poetess from ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... with sisters dear! O men with mothers and wives! It is no linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives! Stitch! stitch! stitch, In poverty, hunger, and dirt,— Sewing at once, with a double thread, A shroud ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... that a hole in the cartilage of the nose could be turned to any account except to hold an ornament, though that is usually only a bit of grass, but a man sewing the feathers on his arrows used his nose-hole for holding a needle! In coming on to Kangalola we found the country swimming: I got separated from the company, though I saw them disappear in the long grass not ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... Bower, so cut it away at a whole Cable; got up the Fore topmast and Foreyard, warped the Ship to the South-East, and at 11 got under sail, and stood in for the land, with a light breeze at East-South-East. Some hands employ'd sewing Oakham, Wool, etc., into a Lower Steering sail to fother the Ship; others employ'd at the Pumps, which still gain'd ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... Seidl beat time to the inaudible orchestral music, and Niemann sang sans support of any kind. Then would come discussion of readings, markings of cues, etc., all with indescribable gravity, while Frau Seidl-Krauss, a charming ingnue budding into a tragedienne, sat sewing in a corner. After the performance of the drama, I sat again with Niemann and Seidl over cigars and beer. I thanked Niemann for having discarded a universal trick in the scene of Siegfried's murder, and for carrying out Wagner's stage directions to the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... there, but Aunt Miranda sat by the window with her lap full of sewing things, and a chair piled with pasteboard boxes by her side. In one hand was the ancient, battered, brown felt turban, and in the other were the orange and black porcupine quills from Rebecca's last summer's hat; from the ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... commencing about 1850 have been prolific of momentous changes. It is the era of the sewing machine, of the domestication of steam and electricity, the overthrow of the great rebellion, the destruction of slavery, the consolidation of the German empire, the fall of the second Napoleon, the birth of the French republic, the incorporation of India ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... haunts your door ... the town Marks coming and marks going ... You seem to have stitched your eyelids down To that long piece of sewing! ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... pay you what they please. You slave and slave and wear yourself out for three thousand a year when we might have twenty if you went into something else. And when your building-loan stock matures and you do get a little money, you spend it for this—this underbred little sewing-machine, and lure me out in it, and lecture me, as if I—as if I were to blame. I don't know what has ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... on a buoyant, but unquiet sea. In the morning I heard the servants exclaim how providential that master thought of the water-jug when he had left the candle alight; and passing the room, I saw, sewing rings on the new curtains, no ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... have," replied the Prince very gently—he felt gently and kindly even to his grim nurse. "And now let me have my dinner, and go you to your sewing ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik

... here for safety, knowing how liable one is to get one's pocket picked in these crowded London streets." She opened the bulky receptacle and drew it out after the manner of a concertina, exhibiting multitudinous partitions, all stuffed with pieces of paper, coils of tape and sewing silk, buttons, samples of dress materials and miscellaneous rubbish, mingled indiscriminately with gold, silver, ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... to work, and by that time I had learned my health was going. Since then, I've lived on the proceeds of the pawnshop—I had my jewels, you know—and on the odd bits of money I could scrape together by taking in sewing." ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... and white in the face she was, as Mrs. Moloney had imagined her. Sewing she used to be, a bad life for a girl to be at it all day. But she flourished up well after getting married. And what Art had looked into, when he was courting, was the big, longing-looking dark eyes of her, and the gentle voice and ways, and the clouds of soft brown hair ... ...
— Candle and Crib • K. F. Purdon

... the small parlor, before a round table fairly well lighted by an electrolier suspended from the middle of the ceiling and littered with chiffons and laces, Mrs. Blaine stopped sewing and began a laborious search all over the board for the missing article. Finally the scissors were found hidden in the folds of what some day would be a graduation dress, but no sooner were they in use than something else was missing. Impatiently, ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... chubby little one in both her own, and said, smiling, yet with meaning in her eyes, as she tapped the small fore-finger, rough with impatient and unskilful sewing...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... this be confined to the males alone. The girl-women raise poultry, small fruits and vegetables very successfully. They pickle and can the products of the land, and in winter do knitting, netting and sewing of all kinds. ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... of the chests were of the most miscellaneous description:—sewing utensils, marling-spikes, strips of calico, bits of rope, jack-knives; nearly everything, in short, that a seaman could think of. But of wearing apparel, there was little but old frocks, remnants of jackets, and legs of trousers, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... of tea in Tish's parlor, but she kept us out of the bedroom, where we could hear Miss Swift running the sewing machine. Finally Aggie said out of a ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Society dare not deny Mis' Sykes, for besides "being who she was" ("She's the leader in Friendship if they is a leader," we said, emphatically implying that there was none), she kept two maids,—little young thing and a rill hired girl,—entertained "above the most," put out her sewing and wore, we kept in the back of our minds, a bar pin, solid, with "four solitaires" in it. And, "Oh, you know," Calliope Marsh admitted to me later, "Mis' Sykes is rilly a great society woman. They isn't anybody's funeral that she don't get ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... dismissed her. When she had gone out he sat for a moment in deep thought. Elsie's list of articles bought with her last month's allowance consisted almost entirely of gifts for others, generally the servants. There were some beads and sewing-silk for making a purse, and a few drawing materials; but with the exception of the candy, she had bought nothing else for herself. This was what ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... seemed to me that I'm just the sort o' man as would be useful. I don't want to make out as I'm a dabster at any one thing, gentlemen, but there ain't many things I shouldn't be ready to have a try at, from catching one's dinner to cooking it, or from sewing on buttons ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... Occasionally she would open her mouth as if to ask a question, but each time she closed it again without speaking. Mr. Billings sat regarding his wife with what, in a man of less clear conscience, might be called anxiety. At length Mrs. Billings put her sewing ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler

... Mrs. McCormick was sewing yards upon yards of lace on something when Ernestine came in. "She's right in there," she said, referring to Georgia in a sepulchral tone which might fittingly have been employed for: "The remains have been laid out in ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... here whipped his thread, venomously, through the leather he was sewing. "Figure to yourselves, mesdames, that besides being wicked, our cure is a very shrewd man; it is not for the pure good of the parish ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... necessary. In this way much pleasure and profit was extracted from the tales Ben and Thorny read, and much unexpected knowledge as well as ignorance displayed, not to mention piles of neatly hemmed towels for which Bab and Betty were paid like regular sewing-women. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... usual, sitting on the sand and trying to occupy their minds with sewing or reading, yet always with an eye to the road in readiness to rush to their red-headed combination of delivery boy and postman whenever he saw fit to put in ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope

... on weakness. He finished with minute care. He gave constant representations of the Madonna and Child and Holy Families in a domestic character. In one of his pictures in Naples the Madonna is engaged in sewing. His most celebrated, 'Madonna del Rosario,' is in S. Sabina, Rome. The Madonna bending in ecstatic worship over an infant Christ lying on a cushion is in the ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... which are plenty in this country, and sew some of them to others, until it is a square piece, and that is then a garments for them; or they buy of us Dutchmen two and a half ells of duffel, and that they hang simply about them, just as it was torn off, without sewing it, and walk away with it. They look at themselves constantly, and think they are very fine. They make themselves stockings and also shoes of deer skin, or they take leaves of their corn, and plait them together and use them for ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various

... constantly influenced to be diligent, and to make haste and gather all I could, so that on our return home I might receive the plaudit, "Well done, good and faithful child." So it was in knitting and sewing. That I might be able to accomplish more and more each day, I would often induce one or more of my sisters to strive with me, to see which could do the ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... shape of the real Westphalia hams, cut some of the meat off the under side of the thick part, so as to give them a flat appearance. Do this before you begin to cure them, first loosening the skin and afterwards sewing it on again. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... youngster who dared to shout or play within sound or sight of Deacon Fletcher's premises. Every Saturday night, at sunset, all tools for men and playthings for children were put away, to be disturbed no more till sunset on Sunday. All papers, books, knitting-work, sewing, were disposed of 'out of the way.' It was necessary to milk the cows, feed the pigs, and saddle the horse, but that was all the work that was allowed. As to any jest on any holy day, that was, beyond all other things, most abhorrent to their ideas of Christian duty. Life with them was a continued ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Lord would come with these words: "Tell Jesus." I would tell him and soon I would find the missing article. He would even direct me to the very spot where it lay concealed. Soon after I read the book, "Tell Jesus," I took my sewing machine apart thinking that I could clean it and put it together again, just as one of my lady friends had done. I soon found that I was not skilful enough, told Jesus, and obtained help to get the machine together ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... summer. When this result is attained it will be time to attack the sound of 'u' with clubs, and make universal the French sound. In time the American pronunciation will become as superior to all others as are the American sewing-machines and reapers. In the Broad A Club every member who misbehaves—that is, mispronounces—is fined a nickel for each offense. Of course in the beginning there is a good deal of revenue from this source, but the revenue diminishes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... and in regard to the daughter—Annie by name—she would in time become a marketable commodity, which might, if judiciously disposed of, turn in a considerable profit, besides being, before she was sold, a useful machine for sewing on buttons, making tea, reading the papers aloud, fetching hats and sticks and slippers, etcetera. There had, however, been a slight drawback—a sort of temporary loss—on this concern at first, for the piece of goods became ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... have a sewing-bee," Mrs. Freeman said, when Rose had told her the story of Anne's flight from Province Town, and that the little girl had no clothing, but had two golden guineas to spend. "You and Anne will have to be ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis

... extinguishing small fires; an apparatus for weighing wool (one of the most sensitive machines ever invented, and of incalculable advantage for the wool industry); a rotary loom (performing thrice the work of an ordinary one); furthermore, manifold improvements to the sewing-machine, such as a device for threading the needle while the machine is in full operation; an appliance for sewing leather—contrived by a woman in New York who runs a saddlery business there—; and many others. To the sensational inventions, originated in female brains, belong—the ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... until soft. These were employed to make the upper portions of the summer waterproof boots and shoes. The skin of the giant seal, treated in the same way, was used for boot soles, the soles being crimped into shape by biting with the teeth. All sewing was done with deer or whale sinew, the former being considered the best. The same methods are yet employed for dressing skins and ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs

... was next to theirs, and as she sat sewing she could hear the children's talk, for they soon forgot to whisper. At first she smiled, then she looked sober, and when the prattle ceased she said to herself, as she glanced about ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... into the adjoining room, where the cobblers sat cross-legged, sewing and patching ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce

... be well equipped with a hospital to cure disease contracted in disreputable houses, and then there should be schools in the institute for training the girls for useful lives, where sewing, cooking, music, art, and other things are taught. In this way the girls would be fitted to earn honest and wholesome livelihoods when they go ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... then scraped smooth with a case-knife; then rinse, and wipe and dry it, and return it to the cheese-room, and turn it often until dry enough for market. Rich cheeses are apt to spread in warm weather; this is prevented by sewing them in common cheap cotton, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... "Broadway Adjustable Table"; and for a little girl a "Broadway Toy Table." New designs; unique, perfect, and VERY CHEAP. Adjustable to any height. A child can fold it up and carry it from room to room or hide it behind a sofa. For cutting, sewing, reading, writing, children's study and amusement, it is a Constant Convenience. Capital in sickness & for games. Every family needs one or more. Delivered free. For sizes and prices, address JOHN D. HALL, 816 Broadway, N. Y. Order ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown



Words linked to "Sewing" :   gathering, suturing, mend, patch, sewing needle, stitch, patchwork, sewing room, sew, applique, sewing-machine operator, sewing-machine stitch, sewing basket, needle, binding, needlecraft, darn



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