sewing-circle

It had a nursery, a Thursday evening supper with a short bright missionary lecture afterward, a gymnasium, a fortnightly motion-picture show, a library of technical books for young workmen — though, unfortunately, no young workman ever entered the church except to wash the windows or repair the furnace — and a sewing-circle which made short little pants for the children of the poor while Mrs. Drew read aloud from earnest novels.

Babbit 2004

Mrs. Challoner was a member of the vicarage sewing-circle; and here she met Mary, to whom she seemed to take a liking; for she called, asked her to “Toplands,” and, as a special mark of favour, drove her out in her carriage; Mahony being simultaneously summoned to attend the younger of the two sons, a delicate lad of seventeen.

The Way Home 2003

At sewing-circle and quilting and frolics, I'm as good as any; but somehow

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861 Various

The modern sewing-circle, the missionary associations, even the temperance organizations in churches, have frequently been most efficient means of holding churches together.

Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! : Helps for Girls, in School and Out Annie H Ryder

The matter is discussed, at first, (agreeably to custom,) in the sewing-circle of the town.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 Various

She, too, had passed a most unquiet night, but had been able to relieve her feelings to some extent at the sewing-circle, which had met at her home, and at which she poured into the eager ears of her young companions rapturous accounts of the beauty, elegance, dignity, and tenderness of the enchanting stranger, and displayed before their dazzled eyes the lustrous jewel he had presented to her.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 20, June, 1859 Various

In cases of emergency they would sometimes gather a sewing-circle from such neighboring families as could be trusted; and, with its help, accomplish rapidly the needed work.

The Underground Railroad A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &c., Narrating the Hardships, Hair-Breadth Escapes and Death Struggles of the Slaves in Their Efforts for Freedom, As Related by Themselves and Others, or Witnessed by the Author. William Still

The women worked harder than ever; and at every sewing-circle the story of the fight was retold with many a glowing touch added by skillful narration.

Four Years in Rebel Capitals An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death T. C. DeLeon

I met Mrs. Edith Wharton, who remains in Paris, and is doing good work with her _ouvroir_, or sewing-circle, which, with Mrs. Thorne, she has organized in the Rue Vaneau.

Paris War Days Diary of an American Charles Inman Barnard

The meeting, so far as the cold eye of the historian can discern, was dramatic only in its implications and no more exciting than a sewing-circle.

Roosevelt in the Bad Lands Hermann Hagedorn 1923