Sitting cross legged on bench?

I am a strong advocate of good posture and teaching students good habits like raising your work to your face, not lowering your face to your work. That's why, in the workshop, we have height adjustable boards, and students are banned from sitting on them.

Great question. I am glad you asked.

Believe it or not, this traces its origins back to the days of polio. Men who contracted this disease in childhood were destined to be cripples for life. So when they came of age they were guided towards the tailoring trade.

Since all sewing can be done on the knee, these cripple tailors could sew and press the garment all on their lap.

I met a tailor once, his name escapes me now. But he was a outside coat maker for Henry Poole. He would sit cross-legged and had a sleeve-board adopted for pressing on his lap.

I asked if he had the use of his legs and his reaction was priceless. To him it was the most absurd thing he had ever heard. But I would say his masters master was a cripple.

Even I worked with a man who had polio as a child, thats how I know about these men. My old master Eugene Foley told me about it.

To answer your question, its terrible for your posture and your legs. But if you needed to make a living as well all do, the tailoring traded has a place of all of societies outcasts.

I am very much a beginner but here is what little I can offer on this: In Practical tailoring : the art and craft simply explained for the student and apprentice / by J. E. Liberty (a marvelous text, although using very dated trade language so a little impenetrable at times) he explains this in a few paragraphs and comments that the position is quite comfortable and to be recommended to the apprentice. That is a text which very much promotes hand-sewing, and explains the manipulation of the cloth in terms of hand-sewing, not machining. I don't have my copy to hand, but will endeavour to upload the relevant pages later. When hand-sewing I have tried this position and noticed that I am often at least as comfortable as sitting in a modern adjustable swivle chair. It allows you to use the curve of your knees and thighs to shape and support curves in the cloth, and brings your face closer to the work. Notably - you sit with a straight back that is lent over at the waist rather than with a rounded back, and that conveniently makes it easier to balance in the position. All of this I suppose depends on one's own individual body. JE Liberty, and other resources reference a time when tailors pressed on their knees rather than at a bench or ironing board and one imagines that would have been excruciating. It would be interesting to know the extent to which the position is still adopted in this modern world of ergonomics etc.