I work for a BBC radio programme called Word of Mouth. We are looking for sewing words and their meaning. Here are a few we have found - Cabbage - the surplus cloth from a job, Gussett - where does that come from. Schmutter - yiddish term for cloth. Baste - why is that word used for temporarily attaching two bits of cloth. Felling - a way of finishing off cloth. Mantle - an old word for a woman's coat
So if any of you have any words you can share with us. I would be very grateful. the programme will be going out on radio 4 in two weeks time
Pop over to my web site and take a look at the sewing glossary there. You'll see that we here in the UK use different terms for some things from those our American cousins use. :)
These are usually "seemed like a good idea at the time" or "I'll get back to this" projects that were brought home from the store or possibly even started and then stashed with the good intentions of being worked on later. Later being anywhere from a few days to years later. My best PIG. While packing up my sewing room to move I found a sack with the logo of a long since defunct fabric store, Looking inside I found a pair of little green rompers with an elephant appliqué basted to the bib. I was making them for my son who, when the PIG was found, had just turned 32!
Now there's a great thread........."Best PIG found"
In Montreal, the word was pronounced schmatta - Google gets lots of hits on this spelling and nothing significant on the "er" spelling.
The word means "rag" and those in the clothing business referred to it as the "rag trade" or "schmatta trade". My Irish-born (Limerick) grandfather learned Yiddish when he came to Canada as a youth (ran away from home at 16) and worked in the Montreal rag trade.
Gusset comes from Old French and is the name of a piece of armour used to fill a joint.
"shmatte" is what I hear for the Yiddish word, and the prevailing connotation is derogatory " I have nothing to wear except this old shmatte" i.e. "rag"
Oh, there are loads! Pop over to rec.crafts.textiles.quilting - us who quilt as well as sew use LOADS of acronyms!
QI: Quilt Inspector: Usually someone like this:
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his sister:
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you should see the ones we renaissance fair costumers go for! Here's a link to a great list - you'll see the sewing/costume related ones!
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are a few tasters - I will admit that they adopted a few I came up with!:
Fabric Constipation - So much stash jammed into the closet that you cannot actually get a single bit out! You grab it, tug it... tug some more, tug again, and BANG! You and a ton and a half of fabric are in a heap on the floor!
Frog-stitching Finger - that numb and then tingling feeling in the fingers, caused by over-use of the stitch ripper (rip it, rip-it, rippit, rippit... )
Garbacious - Something (fabric) lushious and unputdownable that just
*has* to be added to the wardrobe! Usually a furnishing fabric...
I believe it's actually "schmatte" in Yiddish, szmata in Polish for "rag" And in the US I sometimes have heard people in the clothing industry refer to themselves as "being in the rag trade".
My grandmother tended to say I was "all streely" or I looked like "an old streel" when disheveled (which I commonly was as a small child. I sent that one on to the dictionary of American slang editors, who kindly wrote me back and told me that a streel was an Irish term for a sash -- we imagined my grandmother's use was probably in line with an untied sash that had dragged on the ground quite thoroughly.
If you'd like a bit of controversy, try getting someone to define "sloper" and "block", Both refer to basic patterns with minimal wearing ease. Some swear up down and sideways that a sloper has seam allowances and a block does not. Some are equally vehement that a block has seam allowances and a sloper does not. There's a third camp that says "sloper" is a home sewing term and "block" the professional patternmakers term...
Oh yes... judy, dummy, mannequin, dressform... and then there's the act of making a garment by using a mannequin, not a pattern -- draping in the US, modeling in the UK?
I think for my glossary I'll stick with the ones most likely to puzzle home sewists... With customers, to avoid confusion, I call them pattern testing garments!
Markers are pretty concrete. But I've always thought that "shrinking the marker" by wadding it up and then flattening it out again probably produced pieces the poor folks sewing hated....
When critting a new garment, mom would sometimes say "the hem draggles in the back" -- an emphatic and disapproving way to say that the back was longer than the front.
Later I learned that to "draggle" something is to dirty it by dragging it on the ground -- and when *her* mother was learning to talk, a hem that was a bit longer than it should be would draggle!
I was there when "Frog" was coined by Amy Detjen in the big Knitlist. At that time it meant, specifically, undoing knitting by pulling on the yarn after exposing live stitches, as distinguished from un-knitting stitches one by one.
Frogging was done to salvage yarn from thrift-shop finds, remodel or repair old garments, and to correct mistakes. Since a *small* mistake would be corrected by un-knitting, or by dropping a stitch and making it ladder down to the error, then repairing the ladder with a crochet hook, "frog" acquired emotional resonance and inspired many Knitlist-specific terms such as "thank you for your support during my sojourn on the lily pad."
A very short time after "frog" became a standard term on Knitlist, "frog-stitching" and similar terms began to appear on other forums, nearly always with the meaning "to take out stitches because of a mistake"; I don't recall hearing anyone speaking of frog-stitching as part of a repair, remodel, or salvage operation. I feel that this happened because it was the emotional resonance that crossed forum lines.
I've never seen any frogs on the lace-makers' mailing list; only "retro-lacing" and such terms. I presume that this is because "ripping" isn't part of the vocabulary; if you make a mistake in bobbin lace, there are only three options: live with it, cut it off the pillow and throw it away, or undo the stitches by reversing the process by which they were made.
I'm not sure mistakes in needle lace can be undone at all. I have undone mistakes in the coarse needle lace I use on the heels of my socks, but only if I realize it before taking the next stitch.
Correcting a mistake in tatting means untying knots you can't see, or cutting out the mistake and proceeding as if you had run out of thread.
Crochet can be frogged, but I don't hang out on any Crochet forums and don't know how or whether the term is used there.
Here are a few that I use regularly that have been unfamiliar to my non-sewing clients: Shirring -- the gathering of a larger piece of fabric to a smaller piece Ease--2 meanings: 1) additional fabric in a garment to allow movement and comfort. 2) verb--similar to shirring, but with less fullness--typically refers to sleeves Drape--2 meanings: 1) to place fabric on a dressform and maninpulate to achieve a design. 2) refers to the way a fabric hangs and moves.
Juliette
dylan w> I work for a BBC radio programme called Word of Mouth. We are looking
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