photo from Amazon.com
Some fascinating reading. At least to sewing geeks.
NASA’s standards pushed the very limits of the equipment used by ILC, as well as the very limits of the seamstress’s own technique. The tolerances allowed — less than a sixty-fourth of an inch in only one direction from the seam — meant that yard after yard of fabric was sewn to an accuracy smaller than the sewing needle’s eye. To achieve such precision, many women used a modified treadle that, instead of starting and stopping the Singer’s operation, fired one stitch per footfall through the multiple layers of a suit’s surface. For the hundreds of feet of seams in each suit, this meant venturing stitch by tiny stitch across the length of a football field, with a single misstep leading to a discarded suit.