Based upon prior research and various documents on the Richmond Clothing Depot, it generally implies that the Richmond Depot itself did very little if any assembly of goods there. They did employ in-house tailors and cutters who's job was to cut the materials out of bulk into kits, then those were dispursed to sub-contracted ladies for assembly. They were paid when they turned in the finished goods.

Of the ANV flags I have examined majority of them were hand sewn. I have seen a couple that the red field segments appear to have been done by machine, perhaps the border, but stars and other parts by hand. I havent yet encountered one that was totally by machine. A good friend of mineand fellow historian spend decades collecting, restoring and using many of the 1850-60 era sewing machines,a nd he used them too on his authentic goods. based on his statements and experience using a wide variety of period brands he mentioned they do fairly well with straight line stitching, but not as good on anything that required curves, sharp angles etc. Which may also help explain why those that had some machine stitching on them, the stars etc were done by hand.

Id love to locate the actual instructions that the ladies were given to assemble the flags. Obviously something existed since most all of a given issue were assembled near identically in regards to size, star arrangement and orientation etc. Another thing that I have noticed is that there might have been some lee-way or lack of specific explanation in regards to the assembly of the field since Ive noted a fair number whereas the narrower band of red was placed at either top or bottom of the flag and not always in the middle between the two larger bands that we more frequently find.
Just an opinion and observation
Frederick