I think it's partly the climate that makes 'em so slack, she philosophised, pinning a new bag on her knee, and preparing to backstitch the seam.
"Penelope's Irish Experiences"
Kate Douglas Wiggin
Nowadays folks don't have to sew unless they want to, but when I was a child there warn't any sewin'-machines, and it was about as needful for folks to know how to sew as it was for 'em to know how to eat; and every child that was well raised could hem and run and backstitch and gether and overhand by the time she was nine years old.
"Aunt Jane of Kentucky"
Eliza Calvert Hall
The earliest American patent specifically recorded as a sewing machine was U.S. patent 2,466, issued to John J. Greenough on February 21, 1842. His machine was a short-thread model that made both the running stitch and the backstitch.
"The Invention of the Sewing Machine"
Grace Rogers Cooper