Susan Wright
image credit: Wright State University

The Tate family sewing machine used by the Wrights in Kitty Hawk.Image credit: National Park Service

Sewing with the Wrights...

The Wright brothers learned to sew from their mother, Susan Wright. Although she died from tuberculosis when both were quite young, she had a profound effect on their futures: not only encouraging their curiosity and inventiveness, but also teaching them a great many mechanical skills.

Susan Wright had learned from her father, a carriage maker, to use tools and to develop her own mechanical aptitude. She passed on much of what she knew to her children. When it came to sewing the fabric, Orville and Wilbur considered the sewing machine as much a tool as any other she had taught them to use.

Katharine Wright described Orville and Wilbur preparing the 1902 glider in a letter to their father, August 20, 1902:
"Will spins the sewing machine around by the hour while Orv squats around marking places to sew. There is no place in the house to live but I'll be lonesome enough next week and wish that I could have some of their racket around."

There is little in the written record beyond this point about the fabric. One can assume that the Wrights continued to do all their own sewing until their first production aircraft began rolling out of their factory in 1910.