The Surprising Genius of Sewing Machines

can you explain how a sewing machine works I mean think about it we've all seen them there's that little needle that's moving up and down really fast leaving a trail of stitches behind them but if you think about it for a second how are they doing it because the needle is never actually going fully through the fabric if you're hand sewing you have to pass the needle up and down you have to let go of the needle and grab onto it on the other side so in order to invent the sewing machine we first had to invent a whole new way of sewing it's one of these things that almost no one thinks about but is so important every piece of clothing you've ever put on virtually was made by a sewing machine so in this video I'm going to explain how sewing machines work and I promise when you find out you will find it so incredibly satisfying and what you'll realize is that these machines are performing tiny mechanical Miracles every second a part of this video was brought to you by kiwi Co more about them at the end of the show The pedal is right in front of your right foot you can gently rest it it doesn't need a lot of pressure so easy does it and you should be able to start going all right ah all right this is amazing I find it meditative if I were going to sew two pieces of fabric together this is how I would do it weaving the needle back back and forth through both pieces of fabric this is known as a running Stitch and there are more sophisticated stitches you could do but if you're trying to mechanize any hand Stitch you run into a major problem which is that anytime you pass the needle through the fabric you have to release it on one side and pick it up again on the other side this is almost impossible for a machine to do at least a machine from 200 years ago so in order to invent the sewing machine we first needed to come up with a totally new way of sewing and this came in three breakthroughs humans have been sewing clothes for tens of thousands of years in 2016 researchers found a needle in a cave in ...