arm's-eye

Updated: May 20, 2025

At my left Bessie was also practising on running seams, and a little farther down we saw poor Eunice struggling at the same hopeless lesson. The foreman, whose name proved to be Isaacs, "Abe" Isaacs, brought us our first "lot" of work. Mine consisted of six dozen coarse muslin corset-covers, which were already seamed together, and which I was shown how to "finish" with an embroidery yoke and ruffled edging about the arm's-eye. There is no basting, no pinning together of pieces; all the work is free-hand, and must be done with infinite exactness. I must hold the embroidery and the finishing strips of beading on the edge of the muslin with an exact nicety that will insure the edges of all three being caught in one seam; a process difficult enough on any sewing-machine, under any circumstances, but doubly so when the lightest touch sends the three-ply fabric under the needle with an incalculable velocity. Result of my first hour's work: I had spoiled a dozen garments. Try as I would, I invariably lost all control of my materials, and the needle plunged right and left everywhere, in fact, except along the straight and narrow way laid out for it. And, to make matters still worse, I was painfully conscious that my old woman vis-

Dorothy Richardson - The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself