Needlewomen

I tried to recreate the idea of sewing solidly for 15 hours as was done by many women in the 1800's creating clothes for the gentry and dieing young often of consumption, and done today by many men and women whist they sew solidly to fulfill high street fashion stores' quotas in Asia locked into their work spaces.

My aim was to sew for 15 hours and record this by taking continuous pictures using a timer attached to the camera, my limited mathematics made some interesting calculations as to how many seconds the intervals should be, final decision 21 seconds. I am usually easily distracted by having lots of other jobs to do also the discipline of being recorded meant I did just sew solidly.

My son taking a photo into the workroom

The camera ran out of battery after 10 hours so i came to a halt I manged to sew 89metres of running stitch, I don't think i would have been a good earner as a piece worker! I could have carried on, though at points of sitting still my feet became a bit numb and my thumbs a bit stiff. I will now put the images into a film format and share the results, then make the decision as to whether it works and whether to go for the full 15 hours with two batteries!!