With Christmas fast approaching, at the North Pole, Santa and his elves are stitching up a storm on their many varied sewing machines.
Meanwhile, here in Colorado, we have cold temperatures, a fresh dusting of snow, people putting up Christmas decorations and it's again time for another Colorado sewing machine get-together.
We have a variety of topics to offer from our members, along with some pictures, so let's begin our post.
Leon
Leon, who is our member-at-large from the state of Kansas, sends a picture of one of his machines on display at a museum.
FYI this is my Wilcox and Gibbs on display at a Museum
Courtney
As a followup to last month's meeting, Courtney sent a note to Dianne about the bobbin winder tire for her Little Worker machine.
Sorry to take so long to respond. I think you need a new bobbin tire. The bobbin wheel is a bit bigger than a normal bobbin wheel but with a bit of work, you can get a regular bobbin tire to fit. I have enclosed a picture of my "Little Worker" bobbin winder. I believe when I originally received my machine it had a rotten normal bobbin tire. I replaced it with a normal tire. I have just ordered a couple of Singer Model 12 bobbin winder tires for my new transverse machine. I tried one on the "Little Worker" and it seemed to work well. I would be glad to send you the extra one if you would like. I have never seen a bobbin tire like in your photograph. I agree, I don't think there is any way to disengage the mechanism while winding the bobbin.
Courtney
Dorothy
Dorothy, who retired last month from her professional sewing job, is turning her attention to personal sewing projects that she has been wanting to do. She writes:
Hello!
Yes to Saturday and hope I am not scattered.
I have a sewing project that is going to need help and experimenting. There are 2 stitch lines on a patch that does not get folded under. The straight stitch at 1/8" from raw edge and that edge is curling UP showing white. (A Marcy Tilton knit shirt.) There are a variety of unusual steps mostly to reduce bulk which may not have a finished effect I like. We will see.
The fabric is a 4 way extreme stretch that I hope to sew decorative stitches on my Supernova Necchi. Currently, that is not working out. The decorative stitch is gathering the fabric producing bunching in between threads. Sews on woven "Just Fine". More work is needed on the basic tension and then I will start working with stabilizers. Easiest will probably be tissue paper. Not sure I want to pick tissue out of a pattern stitch. Thinking wash away stabilizer will be an easier solution. One of the quilting stores should have that product.
Until Saturday!
Dorothy
James
James sends the following note about his activities over the last month.
I finally got started in making my second bedroom into my sewing room/museum/ and possible guest room. I did have to rent a storage unit to hold stuff that has accumulated in the 20 plus years I have been at my small location. Most of it is likely stuff that I will donate like books and such. There also a huge number of rocks I had collected over the years. My sister came by to help me clean while I took the entire week off from work. I did move my two working treadles into the living room/dining room space once I cleared out enough space. One is a National Two Spool and the other a Wilcox and Gibbs.
I have an antique barrister stackable bookcase with plain glass fronts that I hope to use to display a few of my sewing machines in the second bedroom. It is a Globe-Wernicke with 5 shelves with the rarer standing legged base in golden sawed quartered oak with brass oxidized trimmings. The room has a nice wall at an angle that will be perfect for pattern matching while designing and making quilts. Also handy for displaying quilts in zoom meetings once I figure out how to hang them! I have three electric tables that will go into the room as well as the multi top treadle that I still need to make the tops for. Also multiple heads with some cases.
James
Thanh
Thanh has been traveling and sends us some pictures of interest from his trip.
Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. I'm flying back to Denver this Saturday so I'll miss the meeting again. Here's my short update for November:
I've been traveling the whole month so no major acquisitions. However, I did manage to find another round eyelet button hole cam in an antique shop. It came with a Singer slant shank buttonholer which included all 10 Singer cams.
I was in Europe for first half of November and visited a couple of museums in the Czech Republic. One museum was someone's private collection of vintage cars and household items. We got to see some sewing machine brands you don't find very often in the USA such as a Bagat 706 Visnja, Lada and Bynov.
The other was an applied arts museum in Brno which had a couple of Minerva Boskovice machines on display. Minerva Boskovice had its beginnings in Austria and slowly moved operations to Czech. It was nationalized after WWII and included in the national enterprise MILA based in Opava. In 1950, the company became independent again and gradually became the largest sewing machine manufacturer for households in Czechoslovakia. After 1968 the manufacturing program reoriented only to industrial machines and since 2001, Minerva Boskovice has been the main manufacturer of industrial sewing machines for the group Durkopp Adler.
Other than that just looking forward to getting back home and working on an Elna Supermatic that's waiting on my bench.
Best
Thanh
In Closing
We hope that everyone has a warm and enjoyable holiday season and a happy and prosperous new year!
We will post here again next month. Thank you to our contributors for sharing and to our followers for reading.