The English Sewing Cotton Company Scrapbook

On a recent visit to Skipton I decided to make a few days of it. I stayed on Swadford Street, a little down the road and over the canal from Belle Vue Mill. Past reports in the Craven Herald archive mark Swadford Street out as a centre of drunken behaviour and I have to say that little has changed in that respect over the past 150 years!  But while I was in the area I went to see the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth for the first time since I was an impressionable pre-teen, when I developed a Charlotte Bronte complex that has never quite gone away. We had the same hair colour. It struck me that there would have been some cross over with Dewhurst's developing cotton thread business and Charlotte's life. Charlotte was an accomplished needlewoman - here's a photo of a dress that she hand sewed herself. It's astonishing. Her stitches are just breathtaking. I couldn't stop staring. And did she ever use Dewhurst's Three Shells thread? A little story developed on the bus ba...

Craven Herald and Pioneer, Friday 2nd March 1900: Khaki Fashionable  The term 'khaki', now in such general use, is a little puzzling to some people. As a matter of fact, it signifies the particular colour, and has no reference to the material, which may be cotton or wool, and yet entitled to the term 'khaki'. It is a very sandy colour, having just a yellow tinge in it, which makes it almost the tint of the ground in the tropical sandy countries. By the way, khaki will probably be a very popular tint for women's wear throughout the coming season. Already it is very much in evidence,  and is by no means an unbecoming colour to most people. Does this help to give a date to the introduction of Sylko shade D202?  Do you know about Messages in Bobbins?

The English Sewing Cotton Company was a very disparate company, with cotton mills in Lancashire, Derbyshire, Leicester and North Yorkshire among other places. In my mind, I've seen each of the mills as separate entities that had little to do with each other. So, it was interesting to glean from reports in the Craven Herald newspaper archive that during the 1920s, there seems to have been a social exchange between Dewhurst's mill in Skipton and the Ermen and Roby mill at Patricroft.  On 1st July 1927 the Herald reported on a recent match between Belle Vue Mills Bowling Club (Skipton) and ESCC Patricroft branch. The match was called off due to the unseasonal weather in Skipton that Saturday. Instead, everyone retreated to the Belle Vue Mills welfare hall - which was located where the car park for B&M Bargains is now. A social and tea was provided for 150 people, followed by dancing to the Craven Symphonic Band. A display of exercises on parallel bars was also given by members...

         A regular trawl through the many Sylko listings on ebay occasionally brings up something new to add to the online Sylko Cotton Colour Name Archive. Lately I've found these high numbered rarities - they must be fairly difficult to find as I've been collecting the names for well over a decade and not seen them until their recent ebay sales.

 I have a new book available to purchase in the following ways:  Amazon Kindle- £2.99  https://amzn.eu/d/dPZ4Xae Amazon Paperback - £5.99   https://amzn.eu/d/5mJjhFp Etsy pdf download -£3.59  https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/4375786566/english-sewing-in-the-20th-century-a Here's the blurb: The English Sewing Cotton Company was established in 1897, and brought together a combine of 14 major cotton producing companies. Household names such as Dewhurst's (the makers of the Sylko cotton reel), Arkwright of Cromford, Strutts of Belper and Ermen & Roby were among the members. Over the following 80 years, the fortunes and marketing of the English Sewing Cotton Company reflected the way that women throughout the country sewed. This short history looks at how the English Sewing Cotton Company worked, and at the peak and decline of domestic sewing. From fancy needlework competitions to visiting needlewomen, this book follows the thread of sewing in the 20th centur...

The Executive Committee minutes from the early years of WW2 reflects a sense of minor panic. A war emergency stock of Sylko Machine Twist was set up, with 13,000 gross of finished goods being set aside. The stock was stored in Belper, hopefully off the Luftwaffe's radar. They weren't so sure about the safety of storing it in Manchester - rightly so. In October 1940 a roof spotter was appointed to watch out for incendiaries landing on Arkwright House.  But there were also reports of a slackening off in the quality department.  In August 1940, the Committee declared themselves to be disappointed with the poor lustre of the Sylko samples. Earlier in the year, badly centred tickets were a cause for concern, and the issue of faulty ticketing also reared its head again in October.  But the company recovered from early panic due to the ongoing need for large amounts of thread for the war effort. Belper produced khaki fabric for the army and upholstery thread for Austin Motors wh...