OurWorkbench

We had a very good turnout Saturday morning at Perkins. We were joined for the first time by Anna. Dorothy was there, along with Diane, Courtney, Cheryl & Chris and Janey and John.

Anna brought a long-shuttle machine called "The Elgin". It features a rotoscillo movement, which is a bit novel and we talked some about it. It came to the meeting, separated from a cabinet, but Anna brought pictures of the cabinet and it is very nice, with wood inlays. The machine is in very good condition with excellent decals and a lot of nicely polished parts. It has a bed that is standard Singer size, but has very square corners. Pictures of it are below.


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The rotoscillo movement which is very smooth.
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Diane brought two small chain stitch machines which were as small as any of us had seen. One of them has a leaf spring tension, the other just a bee-hive spring on the thread spool top. One of them had the word BABY on the sewing bed plate. Both of them worked and we passed them around the table for each of us to look at and try. Here are pictures of the two small machines.


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Casiege handwheel
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BABY hand crank
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BABY needle plate
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Courtney returned after being gone last month. He won a second place prize for a mini-quilt done entirely on his Willcox & Gibbs machine. He also brought some wool pieces for Janey who has been experimenting with a felting machine called an Embellisher. He also brought an old Singer 319 for Dorothy, who was looking for parts for one of her machines. It was in pretty rough shape and an obvious parts donor.

John and Courtney talked about the White Rotary movement, which like the Singer 115 and a few others features a single rotation of the hook for each needle stroke.

Cheryl and Chris recently got a treadle together and talked about it. We posted pictures of the drawers Chris built, I believe a couple of meetings ago. They just applied finish to the wood and were very happy with the results. As good as the drawers looked before, it's not surprising.

Janey brought a complimentary little tool for everyone, actually an orange peeler, but useful to Janey for cleaning dirt and old grease from sewing machines. It could also be used like a purple thang. She also brought some stitch samples done with "Sew Easy Foot" and a "Gauge Presser Foot" shared mostly at one end of an unusually long table! Diane also brought the "Adjustable Guide Foot" and a couple of ankles. For those that might be curious, the "Sew Easy Foot" aka "Adjustable Guide Foot" does work well on the straight stitch machines, but does not get as close to the edge as the "Gauge Presser Foot" does.


We look forward to next month's meeting and will post the minutes then.