After taking a few days off, I'm back at work with access to the many Maine sampler photos I've saved. One of the things I was thinking about earlier today is that the sewing skills taught at female academies were not limited to just the fancy work that samplers and silk embroideries so clearly and charmingly illustrate.
      Many teachers noted in their advertisements that they also taught "plain sewing." We know that sewing pretty much happened on a daily basis in homes in the early 19th century, as I mentioned on the 3rd. Nearly all clothing was homemade and besides the need to sew new clothes, the existing ones in the family's collective wardrobe (much smaller than today's) would need near constant repair work. Given all of that, it's hard to believe that very many girls arrived at female academies without rather well-developed sewing skills. Eliza Southgate, whom I mentioned on the 4th, wrote home to her mother from a female academy at the age of fourteen, "I shall want a coat and you may send it up for me to make, or you may make it your self." Clearly, this was not a daunting prospect for her. So, why would teachers offer plain sewing and how was it taught?
     I can only guess at the motivation for offering plain sewing instruction. I think, first, that if one teacher offered it, then others in competition with her would feel the need to "jump on the bandwagon" and also do so. Perhaps there might have been a couple of good reasons for offering it. One was that some of the girls came from much more affluent households where all of the plain sewing was being completed by servants and other hired help. In those homes, girls could presumably grow up without any decent sewing skills. While their parents would certainly hope and expect that they would make good marriages and be able to hire servants of their own, being skilled might always become a necessity. And a skilled seamstress would also be able to quickly recognize that her servants weren't doing a good job with assigned sewing tasks. The second reason is that many if not most New Englanders were pragmatic. A school that taught essential as well as fancy unessential skills might look like a better value.

     This is a photograph of a very different type of sewing sampler from my very modest collection. It's an extremely small shirt all hand sewn of a coarse cotton fabric. It includes underarm gussets and very tiny ones at the bottom hem, as well. The style is rather typical of shirts men wore in the early part of the 19th century, but it's made in miniature--only about 8" from shoulder to hem. The stitching is tiny and perfect.  It's way too small to be intended for an infant and very likely represents a plain sewing exercise. I purchased it at auction in Maine several years ago.  A girl who could produce a piece like this had demonstrated that she had a good understanding of many of the skills needed to create her future family's clothing. Still, pieces like this a not common which either means that most teachers weren't tasking girls with making them, or most family's did not view such creations as items to be treasured and saved--or perhaps both!
     The other type of fancy needlework often mentioned in advertisements, at least here in Maine, is tambour work. Tambour embroidery is created when a piece of very fine net is stretched taut in a hoop and them embroidered in a chain stitch. One of my plans for the next few weeks is to search the Saco Museum textile collection for an example.