It's our holiday posting for the Colorado sewing machine enthusiasts. We have recently had better than seasonal weather, with only a few fairly light snowstorms. What a year it's been. I suspect many will be looking forward with hope to the coming new year.
Our featured members this month are Dianne, James, Cheryl & Chris and Courtney showing us their newest work and latest finds.
Dianne
Dianne got some attachments, which she tells us about
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Acquired this month was a small assortment of Singer attachments from about 1935. This included a #121387 Hemstitcher and picot edger, which is missing its necessary additional parts and manual, so not very useful. A #121704 Buttonholer is complete, with all parts and the manual, but in somewhat rough condition and will need some work. In excellent condition is a #121111 Pinker Attachment. I have the hand crank type for several years, and was always curious about the attachment. It seemed to have had the contents of vacuum cleaner dumped on it, but once cleaned up looks and functions nicely. Manual and special attaching screw are also present. Once oiled and attached, this worked nicely on my 15-91. It is a fun attachment, possibly useful in the future. The curved edge it cuts is more interesting than the sharp zigzag of a pinking shears, and probably less likely to fray badly. I can see this attachment most useful in clothing construction rather than the quilting I now do, but possibly a use will be found for it. Pinking does seem to create a lot of lint!
Dianne
Cheryl & Chris
Cheryl and Chris have done some beautiful wood finishing work.
We went ahead and bought the 1875 American #1 treadle. The machine was complete except for a bobbin winder tire. Oddly enough, the bobbin winder is attached on both sides to the machine so we saw no way to get a new tire on. We looked for set screws and such and came up empty, so we used some of our green belt material to make a tire. Then I wound a bobbin. Getting it to sew was interesting. The latch holding the strange bobbin case in the machine was stuck, so that took a bit of work to get moving again. The tension discs were rusty and dirty so I took them off and polished them up, along with the rest of the tension mechanism. I have never polished such tiny discs before! The needle that was in the machine was an old and cruddy Singer needle, which I replaced with a Schmetz needle. It took a bit of adjusting the height of the needle to get it to pick up the thread and sew properly, but now it sews reliably. It is noisy, as are many old machines, but moves easily now. Another thing that interesting about this machine is the belt. It is made from a spring and looks quite old, but functions great. Were these ever original to a machine or was it someone's good idea of a replacement?
Chris refinished the 1883 Davis cabinet and bonnet. He still has the drawer fronts to do. The cabinet was missing more than half of its shellac and the rest was dirty, dark and damaged. He used denatured alcohol to remove the shellac and then sanded the wood smooth before reshellacing the surface with amber shellac. There were some deep black marks we think might be ink stains that are just going to have to stay along with some deep scratches. We call them "history." The wood came out quite reddish compared to Singer cabinets we've redone. There was no stain apparent on the wood, so we're thinking it might be mahogany. The drawer fronts in the pictures are not refinished yet
and show how dark and opaque the finish used to be.
I had promised to sell some of my more common machines to make room for my new acquisitions. I've put up a Singer lotus 66 in an oak parlor cabinet for sale and soon will be putting up a Singer VS2 in a cabinet.
cheryl and chris
.... to be continued