General Construction: Trade Stock and Order Work (See Order Work): Infants' slips, children's underwear; children's rompers; children's dresses; women's underwear; shirtwaists; aprons; house dresses; fancy negligees.
Special Machine Work:
Buttonholes; tucking; two-needle work; hemstitching; Bonnaz (Corneli) embroidery; machine hand embroidery, scalloping. Students of special ability only are fitted to take this course. One girl in fifteen has usually the requisite application and self-control to operate a special machine successfully. Each machine is specialized, i. e., does its own particular work and no other. Patient attention to little things is required on the part of the operator in order that good results may be produced. Such machines are supposed to need only a hand behind them to guide the work. Our experience has proved to us that good results are produced only when intelligence and patience are factors. In the factories, machinists keep the special machines in order, but the school aims to train the operator to keep her own machine in good condition, thus saving her valuable time.
Bonnaz (Corneli) embroidery work offers excellent opportunities for correlation with the Art Department. Both Bonnaz (Corneli) and machine hand embroidery must be felt in the muscles before they can be carried out on the material, therefore the work with the pencil in making designs which are to be carried out on the machine is of first importance. Free-hand designs must be made first in large, free movements on the machine until the arm muscles are thoroughly familiar with the curve, sweep, and feeling to be executed. After mastery of movement and sweep are acquired, the same designs may be reduced in size ten or twenty times and the pupil will still work them out in perfect rhythm. After the mastery of movement is acquired, the cording, braiding, and three-thread attachment work are easily learned by a pupil who has the necessary mechanical sense. The course of Bonnaz (Corneli) work covers: chain stitch, lettering, appliqué work, cording, braiding, three-thread work.
Machine hand embroidery should be given as a supplementary course to Bonnaz (Corneli) embroidery. It gives excellent training in design and color work.
Special trade machine straw sewing should also be taken up after the regular course in operating. It gives splendid exercise for quick handling of material, but makes a poor foundation of itself on which to build a painstaking, expert, all-round operator. Speed is the first requisite in getting a hat properly shaped, as the straw braid is flying through the machine at the rate of four thousand stitches a minute; hence the general operating is given first to the pupil to train her in the requisite neatness. As straw-sewing has long slack seasons, the operator can during such times return to the regular operating.
Dressmaking Department
Aim
The aim of the Dressmaking Department is to train girls in the elements of the dressmaking trade, in order to enable them to immediately secure employment as improvers and finishers or as assistants on skirts, waists, and sleeves, and to give them a preparation which will help them eventually to rise to positions of skill and responsibility. The training eliminates the errand girl and apprenticeship stages, and makes possible a living wage at the start. The result is accomplished in from nine to seventeen months, the time depending entirely upon the capability of the girl, her physical condition, her application to her work, her regularity of attendance, and her previous training.