Outline of the RRL

1. What is sewing?

1.1 Meaning

1.2 Origin

1.3 Different types of sewing

2. Importance of sewing

2.1 Livelihood

2.2 Women

2.3 Economy
 REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Anyone who has ever attempted to make a garment quickly understands that the most

important element of the final product is how well a garment fits. In home economics and family

and consumer sciences (FCS) education, sewing is a tradition. Sewing became an element of

home economics curricula a century ago, and mastering sewing skills, whether for fancy work or

utilitarian purposes, was seen as critical to assuming domestic duties (Savage, 2006). Bone

needles have been found in 355 archaeological strata and 271 sites. Reexamination of the

evidence reveals that they are a unique cultural invention that arose in Eurasia between 45 and 40

thousand years ago. The size disparities between the earliest known needles, discovered in

Siberia and China, suggest that needles were created independently in these two regions. Eastern

European needles could be either a unique innovation or a geographical expansion of earlier

Siberian and Caucasian stitching practices. During the Solutrean, needles arrive in Western

Europe. The larger size range found in Magdalenian specimens supports the theory that needles

of various sizes were utilized in a number of applications (d’Erriko, 2018).

In the mid-19th century, manufacturers in the Western society began to innovate

sewing machines, and promoted the machines to ordinary families, so the sewing machines

were promoted earlier than washing machines and television sets. With the importance of

women in society, the sewing machine was given a special cultural significance. The sewing

machine was meant to free women from heavy manual sewing, but women in Taiwan's
experience with the sewing machine revealed a history in which they were assigned distinct

social roles by the country at different phases and based on certain purposes (Wong & Chen,

2017).

Before the ready-made apparel industry, learning sewing skills was an important part of

preparing young women for homemaking roles. Later on, learning sewing techniques was

viewed as important to job preparation in the textiles and apparel industry.

Sewing and embroidery (including tilla work, crochet, and weaving) for alternative

sustainable livelihood: Sewing and embroidery (including tilla work, crochet, and weaving) are

common haor area alternative livelihood activities, especially for women, and have been

designed with the resources, skills, abilities, and interests of the people concerned. Because these

sources of income are seasonal, it is necessary for the rural poor and marginalized to earn

through a variety of activities to ensure a consistent income throughout the year. However, a lack

of training and credit facilities, as well as a lack of product marketing and social issues, posed a

barrier to long-term livelihood development (Sarma, 2010). For women who tried to make a

living by sewing, sewing machines were not liberating.

Sewing has long been considered household labor, and it is frequently the most extensive

experience in a woman's life. Women's lives in Taiwan were marked by the introduction of

sewing machines, as well as family modernization. Sewing-related technologies and cultural

transmission were categorized as women's fields for the most part. As a result, the sewing

machine was given a special social importance in addition to the gender stereotype. Sewing

machines, for example, were once considered one of the most important items in a woman's

dowry in Taiwan. In addition, the sewing machine became popular in households as a result of
the country's economic development policies. Sewing is an important life skill and is the vehicle

to teach self-confidence through skill building. The garment business in Taiwan grew rapidly in

the 1960s and 1970s, and many rural females left farm work to work in factories and in the

sewing garment sector. This surge was evident in the number of sewing work-shops and

recruiting announcements in the newspaper. Women poured themselves into the production

lines, either passively or actively. In addition to making more money than women in rural

regions, this indicated that women had begun to have options to walk away from home and into

the job, which had previously been considered "men's exclusive domain." (Wong& Chen, 2017).

Fabric attributes were mapped to optimum sewing machine settings for intelligent sewing

machines using qualitative principles based on sewing machine interactions at various speeds.

Fuzzy logic inference processes have been applied in a neural network to enable for output

membership function optimization and, as a result, self-learning. The approach has been

successfully applied to the development of intelligent sewing machines and is now being used in

the textile and garment industries.

However, it indicates that garment employees had significant advantages than cashew

workers, in part due to their working-class rather than peasant family economic backgrounds.

Garment workers had greater opportunities for formal education, married later and happier, and

worked in a more stable and pleasant workplace. The rules of the new socialist administration

that encouraged working women benefitted both groups. However, the garment workers' ability

to recruit domestic assistance gave them a significant edge in caring for their families at a period

of conflict and chaos.

 Furthermore, the government went to great lengths to mobilize housewives who were

unable to work outside and integrate their surplus labor into the national economy. Tung-min

Hsieh, the chairman of Taiwan Province, used the phrase "living room as factory" in 1972,

establishing "family production," and urging housewives to use their free time at home to engage

in family side jobs in order to increase family income and national output. One of the most

common possibilities for home subcontract production was making clothing with sewing

machines.
References

Savage, S. (2006). Redefining Sewing as an Educational Experience in Middle and High

Schools.

D’Erriko, F., et al. (2018). The origin and evolution of sewing technologies in Eurasia and North

America, vol.125, 71-86.

Sarma, P.K. (2010). The haor vulnerabilities and other obstacles for sustainable livelihood

development in Nikli Upazila, 283-290.

Wong, J. & Chen, H. (2017). Sewing for Life: The Development of Sewing Machine in the
Tune of Women Life Experience in Taiwan.  Cross-Cultural Design, pp 469-481.
Sheldon, K. (1991). Sewing clothes and sorting cashew nuts: Factories, families, and women in

Beira, Mozambique . Women’s Studies International Forum, pp 27-35.