Thursday, August 26, 2004
Needle, Thread and Memory Sticks
Although her machine is no longer state of the art, Ms. Zepeda was part of a quiet revolution that has overtaken the world of sewing. Conventional machines have given way to souped-up stitching monsters that combine data-processing muscle with “design for dummies” versatility. Loaded with large memory caches and floppy disk drives (U.S.B. ports are soon to come), machines like Husqvarna Viking’s Designer I function as ancillary computers for hobbyists, many of whom augment their sewing workstations with laptops so they can continually update software and stitch patterns. In essence, sewing machines are now computers with needles and thread attached.