Abuse of media

I noticed the abuse of woodcut common in the 19th century at reference 1, with wood being cut so that the result was more like a pencil drawing or a steel engraving; black line on white rather than the other way around.

Then the other day I noticed this label on a blanket, perhaps 50 years old, exhibiting a similar abuse of medium. It is all very well to get the sewing machine to write dark red on a white foundation, but quite another to get it to write white on a dark red background, as illustrated left.

I wondered how exactly you got a sewing machine to do this, in bulk, fifty years ago, but the best I could do was associate to the very crude punched cards - actually metal discs - that we came across a couple years ago in Canada and noticed at reference 2.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/cross-dressing.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/ancient-and-modern.html.