means The act of joining, mending, or decorating fabric and other materials by passing thread through them with a needle.

from From Old English 'siwian,' to stitch or fasten with thread, rooted in the Proto-Germanic 'siwjan' and ultimately a Proto-Indo-European root '*syu-,' meaning to bind or sew — a cousin of Latin 'suere' (source of 'suture' and 'couture') and Sanskrit 'sivyati.' The same ancient thread runs through 'seam' and, more surprisingly, 'sutra,' the Sanskrit word for a stitched-together line of text — so a holy verse and a hemmed skirt share a needle's ancestry.