Did the sewing machine free women from the needle, or chain them to it?

Both, depending on which woman you ask. Before the machine, an experienced seamstress needed at least 14 hours to make a man's dress shirt, 10 for a woman's dress and nearly three for a pair of summer trousers. Sewing machines cut those times to an hour and 15 minutes for the shirt, an hour for the dress and 38 minutes for the trousers. For a household this meant a real change: most people, except the very well-off, had only two sets of clothing, a work outfit and a Sunday outfit. With machines, the reduced labour allowed women more hours for their own leisure as well as the ability to seek more employment.

For the women who sewed for a living the story was harder. The machine brought longer hours in the peak season, when wealthy customers ordered for 'the Season': many in high-end London retailers worked a minimum of eighteen hours, and sometimes up to twenty, in the season. In 1851 nearly half of women workers in England held manufacturing jobs, and 40 percent of those worked from home doing cheap, non-mechanised outwork. When industrial machines first became popular, many seamstresses lost their jobs, because fewer workers could produce the same output.

The machine did one more thing: clothing manufacturers were its first customers, and they used it to produce the first ready-to-wear clothing and shoes.