A Time to Sew Trivia Quiz

As sewing is such a generalised term and obviously applies to a few of these answers I have used the term stitching to refer to the act of joining materials together. There is evidence that people were joining animal furs together using a bone with animal sinews and catgut in the Palaeolithic era.

Sewing was done by hand for thousands of years until the industrial revolution moved it into the mills. These originally only produced whole cloths so tailors and seamstresses were still required, but Isaac Singer's 1850 sewing machine design was finally able to surpass their sewing skills.

Many people still made clothes at home with or without a sewing machine until the 1970s as it proved cheaper and they had a wider design and material choice. This declined when mass production in readymade clothing bought the prices much lower, so sewing has now become a hobby in most Western countries.

General stitched sewing requires numerous tools that include needles, pins, threads, shears, thimbles and marking chalk. Many others are used that make life easier such as a sewing machine, seam rippers, rotary cutters and mats.

Other items used to complete articles such as buttons, snaps, zips, collars and elastic are referred to as haberdashery in UK English and notions in the US.

Many of these basic items are used in the rest of the answers that follow so I shall only specify specifics with them.

The earliest mention of knitting appears to be in the fifteenth century in Europe. The first commercial guilds were formed at this time and an early knitting frame bought out in the mid sixteenth century led to it becoming either a hobby of the rich or a way to use scraps for the poor.

Knitting produces fabric by interlacing loops of wool around other loops of wool from the same skein. It creates stitches and there are many of them on the needle at the same time. Each stitch transfers the loop to the other needle until you reach the end and that is a row. It then moves up a line and the process is reversed.

Basic knitting uses two stitches - a knit or a purl. Using all of one will create a garter stitch and alternating rows create a stocking stitch. Others are possible with different combinations and the stitches may also be twisted for other variations.

For a bare minimum you will need wool and a pair of knitting needles, although technically a very basic piece can be achieved with the fingers. Crochet hooks and darning needles are helpful as are modern inventions such as ballwinders, yarnswifts and yarntainers. There are also numerous devices available to keep count of stitches or rows.

I use the term wool as that is what's most commonly used but it can be done with ribbons or metal wires or any form of filament one would like to try.

Quilting involves sewing a minimum of three layers of fabric together - the sewing is intended to be seen and to create a three dimensional padded surface. The name comes from the French 'cuilte' which is derived from the Latin 'culcita' meaning a cushion or stuffed sack. The term first appears in the thirteenth century but no-one knows when the practise began.

The stitches may be made manually or with a machine but must go through all three layers, known as the top fabric, the batting (insulating material) and the backing.

Quilting is not restrained to bed quilts, it is used in furnishings, wall hangings, clothes and within other art forms. Quilts can be made from expensive lush materials all the way down to rag scraps. They were used extensively among the poor as a way to use every last scrap of cloth or old clothes without waste.

Many quilters will still use items that have a special meaning to them to build into a patchwork memory quilt or as a memorial. Quilts are also often made as community projects, particularly in smaller towns, as a way of bringing people together.

Most tools are the same as simple stitching projects, but they do use special needles that are called 'betweens' which are smaller and stronger. A specialised basting spray can also be used to keep the quilt together while it is being sewn. Finally a bias binding is used to cover the edges of the quilt.

The photo shown is more representative of a patchwork design as opposed to the real thickness of the quilt which is the end result.

A braid, or plait, is made by interlacing three (or more) strands of flexible material. This is usually a flat rope-like structure but it can have added strands or reversal of the pattern to create French, fishtail, waterfall and multi stranded designs.

Braiding materials together creates a rope that is stronger than all of its parts together and is used by climbers and sailors for its strength and its ability to stay straight and not twist.

Leather braiding has been around for many years and is used in whips, bridles and leads for its strength and decoratively for belts and hatbands.

Braiding as a textile art has been used for centuries in military and ceremonial uniforms; these are often in gold and silver strands. They are also used on graduation caps around the world. Braiding like this also goes hand in hand with the craft of tassel making; tassels are added as a decorative finish as shown in the picture.

Tapestry in some form has been around for thousands of years with examples of weave pieces being found in the ancient Egyptian tombs.

This type of textile art is traditionally hand made on a loom and is used to make pictures instead of patterns. It is a difficult process and very fragile so these are made for art not practical purposes.

Most woven textiles are made with both the warp and weft threads intended to be seen whereas a tapestry is designed for all the warp threads to be hidden within the design.

Unlike most forms of weaving or similar works the weaver works from the back and is following a design that is a mirror image to what they are working on. Large sitting frames actually had a mirror beneath the design to work off.

The huge tapestries of the middle ages were constructed by men as it was such a physically demanding task. In general it took a month to produce a square yard of tapestry.

It is often confused with embroidery which is a different process altogether - the world famous Bayeux Tapestry is actually embroidered.

Tools include the loom itself with many other tools needed if you are constructing it yourself. Specific tools include bobbins, pirns, quills and winders for dealing with the wool. Then there are scrapers, combs, heddles, raddles, shuttles and weaving needles for the process itself.

Lace is a very delicate fabric made of a thin thread in a weblike pattern. It can be made by machine or hand and can be needle lace or bobbin lace. As it can be made by various forms including crochet and knitted I have categorised this as tatting which is a unique way of producing lace.

Tatting creates lace from forming knots and loops; in particular it uses cow hitches and half hitches over a core thread that forms rings and chains in various patterns.

Lace only requires a thread and a shuttle to create. The tatter wraps the thread around one hand and uses the shuttle with the other. Most shuttles have an inbuilt hook these days but if not a crochet hook may be needed.

Tatting lace is actually a more durable form and is often used on cuffs or wrists in dressmaking and has long been used for doilies and table wear. In later years it is being used increasingly in jewellery or decorative neck or wrist bands often with experimentation with different materials.

Crochet involves creating textiles by the use of a crochet hook and strands of material, traditionally wool. The name comes from the French word 'croc' which means hook. The first evidence points to use from the nineteenth century.

Apart from the fact that you use one crochet hook instead of two needles the main difference from knitting is that knitting has many stitches open all the time and crochet only has one. Each crochet stitch, regardless of type, is completed before the next one is started. Because of this design a stitch that breaks is less likely to create damage to the finished product whereas a dropped or broken stitch in knitting can cause the work to unravel.

Crochet is often made of individual motifs that are then sewn together while knitting is usually composed of one piece; circular designs are much easier in crochet. Thanks to many designers' use of it crochet has come back into fashion in the 21st century.

There are many different styles of crochet and at least 8 recognised stitches, these do vary from country to country. The photo shows the basic granny square but there are 'line' formats that can look very similar to some knitting.

For crocheting all you need is the wool and the hook which comes in many sizes and materials such as bone, bamboo, aluminium, plastic, and steel. Hook grips and ergonomic handles are also available.

Applique is a type of needlework where patches of fabric in different shapes, fabrics or patterns are sewn onto a larger piece to make a pattern or picture. It is used extensively in quilting, banners and on clothes.

As with embroidery it can from much humbler beginnings. Both their origins lie in a way to strengthen worn areas on clothes or to patch them after a hole had formed and were thus used by the poorer classes.

In this day and age a lot of applique is done with glue guns and self-adhesive shapes and it is used in other forms of art such as ceramics. In sewing terms it refers to the needlework technique where the applied pieces have their edges folded under and sewn with either a straight, satin or reverse applique stitch.

Embroidery is a needlework that is used to decorate fabrics using a needle and thread. Decorative work can also involve beads and sequins. It is used extensively on clothing and linen. A common form of embroidery involves either personal or corporate monograms.

There are many embroidery stitches available but the basics are chain stitch, blanket stitch, running stitch, satin stitch and cross stitch. As a craft there are three main types of embroidery.

The first is surface or free embroidery as in the photo provided which is an example of crewel work. The design is applied to a fabric without any regard to its weave.

Counted thread has a design that tells you to make a certain numbers of stitches in rows on the materials so you need to work with the thread of the material to get them the same size. This is much easier if you use a prepared canvas like aida cloth or an embroidery canvas. Cross stitch is a common counted thread embroidery and comes in premade kits for ease of use.

Last is what is known as canvas work which is the same technique as above but the entire canvas is covered in a design. This can still be in cross stitch or single stitch which uses one stitch per square or the easier long stitch which covers multiple squares at a time.

An embroidery needle, which come in multiple sizes depending on the size of the fabric and thread, and thread is all that is actually required but it makes life a lot easier to work with an embroidery hoop or frame, a decent craft lamp and cards to sort threads onto.

Macrame is a different kind of textile design as it uses knots as opposed to any of our other techniques. At its most basic it is just two forms of knots - the square (which is just a reef knot) and what is referred to as hitching which is any combination that uses half of the square knot. Square knots produce a straight line, hitches make it twist.

The craft is ancient, being portrayed in carvings from the Babylonian era where it decorated their clothing. It was very popular in the Victorian era but it then faded until the 1970s when it made a huge comeback partly due to the hippie clothes culture. It was made into curtains, bedspreads, tablecloths, wall hangings and the ever-present plant hanger.

Original macrame materials were coarse fabrics such as hemp, linen and jute but have expanded into leather, twine, wool and anything else people have thought of trying. For those that remember making friendship bracelets, you were making macrame.

Jewellery is probably its biggest seller in the new millennium. Macrame can be easily interspersed with beads or anything else that you can think of. What used to be coarse materials with shells, bones or natural seeds has slimmed down to delicate threads with seed pearls or precious stones adorning all parts of the body.