Hi Cathy,
Thank you for sharing your photos of your hemstitchers. I'm new to Quilting Board, but I too, prefer vintage sewing machines & their incredible attachments! I only discovered them after I moved to North Carolina, in 2005, & started using Ebay for buying & selling sewing machines & their accessories, attachments, & parts, & have become a VintageSewingMachineAttachment-aholic! It horrifies me to think of the hours I have wasted, sewing ruffles with 2 rows of basting, or zig zagging over cording, & messing them up again & again, when I could have done the entire thing perfectly in just a couple of minutes, with a vintage ruffler, on the right sewing machine! LOL!
I have learned that different attachments went in & out of popularity, depending on the clothing fashions of the day, as well as the available fabrics, & some INCREDIBLE specialty attachments, like Singer's one thread embroidery attachments, & Singer's 2 thread embroidery attachments, & Singer's fagoter, apparently plunged in popularity, when the Great Depression hit. Prior to the depression, people were extremely fashion conscious, & had more extra cash available, to afford these items, along with the so called Singer "Penguin" walking foot. These ingenious inventions created complicated, sophisticated decorations, with very little effort, compared to hand sewing the same items. After the stock market crash, though, no one could afford them, so Singer stopped making them, which is why they are so rare & valuable today. Just before Christmas, Valentines, & Mother's Day, are the best times to sell these items for high prices online, but the worst time, seems to be the one or two weeks before & after school starts, or ends. Items that sell for $880 before Christmas, sell for $64 at the end of August. It is interesting to watch!
Anyway, thank you Cathy, & everyone else who shares their treasures with the rest of us, educating us on what we should be on the lookout for!
