Well, I must admit I raised an alarmed eyebrow during Janet Pray's Bluprint class on Industry Secrets (or it might have been the Advanced Techniques one) when she said in 'the Industry' tailors placed the card patterns on their fabric and cut through paper and fabric together with their weighty shears. According to her it is was common practice and no harm came from it. She recommends this as a good technique for home sewers too. It was one of the titular 'secrets' she shared.
I did wonder though, how often those factories arranged a visit from the scissor sharpening man (must be missing a technical term here, cutler doesn't seem right) and had all their scissors serviced on a regular basis. If they had need of multiple pairs of scissors, this probably made commercial sense rather than having multiple pairs for different uses. I have seen people hailed as highly skilled seamstresses sewing with a great beast of a pair of scissors at their side that they seem to use for everything, including thread snips.
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