Cheryl & Chris
Cheryl and Chris have been beautifully refurbishing a Singer 66.
Cheryl writes:
I spent some time cleaning up a Singer 66 head and put a crank on it. Chris made a nice box for it using treadle hinges since we have quite a few of them. It may get loaned out to a 13 year old who liked another hand crank I had for a while.
cheryl
Dianne
Looking back over our get togethers, you can see that Dianne has a liking for cute little sewing machines. Others of us like them, too. Dianne has another one, this one with both chain stitch and chain drive. She writes:
A recent acquisition is The Little Comfort toy sewing machine. Who can resist one in such wonderful condition? The chain drive is distinctive and appealing. It was manufactured by Smith & Egge Manufacturing Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut probably between 1900 and 1910. This is a small machine, about 7 inches tall and 6 inches wide, but reasonably hefty because it is cast iron. The ads for this machine appealed to traveling adults, but also said it was ‘easy enough for a child to operate.’ This one came with its original clamp and shipping box, 3 little packets of Willcox and Gibbs needles and two sheets of disintigrating paperwork which I will attempt to consolidate and preserve.
It is a little too tall for the photo tent my husband purchased for mineral photography, so it needed to be carefully set to avoid edges of the background paper and the exact positioning of parts was ignored. Yes, the cloth guide is inverted, but it might work better that way and obviously I’m not going to do much sewing with it anyway. It came looking so nice I didn’t even want to touch it! Nothing needed to be done, and I did nothing.
The paperwork is going to be a big problem, as it was poor quality paper, probably acidic, and is disintigrating. A full free day will be needed before messing with it. The threading for this machine, which came in several versions, seems to involve an unusual thread path that goes under the bar across the front. As this bar rises, it pushes against the tension spring and moves that mechanism, so it makes sense for the bar to be involved in the thread path, timing when the thread advances and then is stopped. Several photos I’ve seen show that. Of course, they could all be copying an incorrect photo posted somewhere! The stitch length adjustment is different from many, and might actually work. Hopefully the papers will can be conserved enough to make a scan.
The W&G needles are in sizes 1, 2 and 3 and the packets have never been opened. They are labeled “Howard Machine Needles” and around a center circular photo of a man with a long gun and a log cabin with smoke coming from the chimney are the words “The Pioneer House Established 1857” They are labeled at the top: “Wilcox & Gibbs and Smith & Egge”. Willcox with one ‘l’. It feels like only one or maybe two needles in each packet. I wonder what the correct pronunciation is for ‘Egge’?
Dianne
Dorothy
Dorothy emailed us about what she has been doing albeit not with a vintage machine. She writes:
I have done nothing but sew up one linen shirt from the Style Arc Jules Woven top and did that mostly on the serger.
For those who don't know about "Style Arc," it is an Australian pattern company that also sells PDF patterns that can be downloaded.
Seb
Seb won't be able to "join" us this time around. However, he and Janey have been emailing back and forth earlier this past month. As it turns out he has come into possession of a treadle that is not a Singer. He had an electric machine that he had let go of, as he couldn't get the machine to work properly. As it turns out, the treadle and the electric are the same "brand." He had sent some pictures and Janey noticed the cute European oil can
The electric was/is a DD model and the treadle is a FF model. Hopefully, when things settle down, he will start a new thread about his Excelsiors. We'll let him tell you about how things have come together with these machines.
Closing
We are taking this month by month. We look forward to being able to meet as we did. One way or the other we will post again next month.