Courtney
Courtney shares what he has been up to with a couple of new acquisitions and some additional notes about the Stella he told us about last month.
Dear All,
Short Synopsis
Stella’s Stella is finally ready to go (I mentioned this last month). All adjusted and sewing like new. I have also put together a present for Stella’s grandmother (my old friend) to help with the sewing; a variety of fat quarters and two or three larger yardages so they will have plenty of fabric to play around with. I have three small quilts in our Library’s “Stitches and Stories” small quilt show. They have 23 quilts this year which may be a record number. I did survive my third Featherweight Maintenance class in Erie and only have three more to go. Think I will take a break after the January class though.
Longer Discussion
About a month ago I got two machines, one given to me by a friend and the other a garage sale find for $35. They are both quite interesting. The garage sale machine was a Pfaff 332: large, heavy, but in nice shape for being 67 years and made in 1956. The seller said it was her mother’s machine and it appears to have been well taken care of and maintained. It includes the embroidery unit which gives it 80 built-in stitches. No cams, no nothin’ extra needed to do the fancy sewing. Actually, there were some extras included but they are not required to make the fancy stitches. The extras included an instruction book (very necessary) and a full set of attachments including 9 presser feet. It also included the infamous stitch wheel which is often missing now. The stitch wheel is a thin piece of plastic which has a circular diagram of 80 specialty stitches and the machine settings for each stitch. I have not had time to play with the machine much yet, but it is running very smoothly so I hope to have fun when I get some time. I have included some pictures of the Pfaff and my other machine the Favta but you must remember the Pfaff is in the back and looks smaller than it actually is.
I have spent most of my time this month working on the little Favta Automatic. It was given to me by an old friend. She said she used it for many years but it was no longer working. It is certainly an interesting little machine. It is Swiss made so it was worth spending a bit of time on it. It is a free arm machine not much larger than a Featherweight. However, it is an automatic zig-zag machine. This means besides straight and zig-zag stitches it will also do a variety of fancy stitches via Bakelite cams similar to the Elna. I don’t know how many cams they offered but I do know I have the five cams the machine originally came with. Unlike many sewing machines which try to simplify their mechanical working, the Favta definitely is a machine. It looks like a machine and works like a machine, no cutsie here at all. It came with a plastic container for bobbins, presser feet and cams. Unfortunately, it only had a few of the original presser feet but at least it uses standard low-shank feet. One of the most important things was that it also came with an original instruction book. The machine had been sitting for many years, so I did have to give it a good lubrication and now it is sounding more like a Swiss machine. The only problem was the part that holds in the hook and provides the nook for the bobbin case’s finger had gotten worn and a bit lose so that the bobbin case would just spin and produce a rat's nest. A small amount of pressure bent the bobbin case’s finger just enough to remain stationary in the little nook and now the machine is stitching nicely. I haven't had time to try out the cams, but they are next when I get some time.
I think things will only get busier with Thanksgiving then Christmas so I am not sure how much sewing machine time I will have in the near future. At least I will grab what I can. Hope you all have a great month.
Courtney
Thank you, Loraine, Dianne and Courtney for the contributions to this months post and thank you to our readers. See you next month.