For sure sewing skills could be shared by all classes of women! My mother made all our clothes until she started working full time. The issue I was trying to point out was the amount of tailoring a woman sewing her own clothes could reasonably do. I don't know if there were dress forms in 1860. When you look at photos from that era, the higher class women are wearing dresses very tightly fitted to their bodies with expensive looking lace and braid and ribbons. If you have someone to pin the seams up for you, and to pin the hem so it is the right length, the sleeve length, etc. your dress will look more polished. There is a certain amount of skill in that. Poorer people made their own clothes, but you can tell what has been professionally tailored. Not everyone could be a seamstress. Not many people can alter a man's suit, and the better dresses of the CW were at least as complicated