MARCH 2016 | 11 BY MICHAEL LOMBARDI orking in the loft of what is now known as the Red Barn in Seattle, a small group of women helped make some of Boeing’s earliest airplanes, attaching fabric to wings built in an adjoining area of the loft. Their tools were thimbles, scissors, a long needle and a length of wax-covered thread. These seamstresses were a critical part of manufacturing airplanes during the first two decades of the company, when the wood-framed wings and metal-framed fuselages had to be meticulously covered to exacting specifications for planes to operate efficiently and safely. After sewing together reams of linen to create the large pieces needed to cover the wings and fuselage, the women would attach the fabric to the wings. Working the sewing machine was a bit of a promotion and a welcomed escape from the tedious and uncomfortable job of doing the stitching—which required frequent rest to alleviate eyestrain and numb hands. In the 1920s, it was uncommon for women to work outside the home. Typically, women made up about 20 percent of the workforce in the United States and at Boeing. Many of the women who came to Boeing did so because they needed work to survive—most were single or widows supporting families. Some were immigrants, including Russians who fled the communist revolution and were trying to make a new start. Typically, it took 10 women two working days to cover a wing. First they stretched the fabric tightly across the wing, taking care to line up seams to run between the ribs rather than on top of them. The women then would use a baseball, or herringbone, stitch to attach the fabric to the wing. Next, HISTORICAL PERSPECT I V E they would pair up on either side of the wing and pass the needle back and forth to secure the fabric to the wing ribs; on thicker wings this was done separately. After they completed the sewing, they sent the wings over to the “dope” shop where the fabric was covered in a cellulose acetate solution, creating a rigid and waterproof surface. (Cellulose acetate has a variety of uses today including in motion picture film and sunglasses.) The work environment was demanding. They worked an eight-hour day and half a day on Saturday, with only a half-hour for lunch. The women also had to put up with the men chewing snuff and spitting—a habit of the day they found annoying. The work for the seamstresses, as well as other employees, was highly cyclical; when a contract finished, their job was over—at least until the next batch of airplanes was ready to be built. With the introduction of all-metal airplanes in the early 1930s, work for the seamstresses declined, although some continued through World War II. In Wichita, Kan., for example, seamstresses covered the wings of Kaydet trainers. And in Seattle, a handful of seamstresses, who represented some of the longestserving veterans of The Boeing Company, sewed fabric onto the control surfaces of B-17 Flying Fortresses. After the war, the art of sewing was limited to airplane interiors. The skills necessary to sew fabric onto airplane wings is now a mostly lost art. Those early Boeing seamstresses are gone now, but a wonderful example of their work hangs in the center of Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry—the original Boeing B-1 mail plane built in 1919, later restored to the same exacting standards by the company in 1951. MICHAEL.J.LOMBARDI@BOEING.COM To see a related video, visit boeing.com/frontiers/videos/ march16. A stitch in time Seamstresses played vital role in the pioneering days of airplane manufacturing W
Frontiers March 2016 Issue
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