amcatanzaro - is this what you're looking for? http://shop.sew-classic.com/Featherw...more-45826.htm

Oops, never mind. The base that the spring was on is threaded and one came right out. The other one came out after a minute of work.
Threaded spool pin it is.

Sewnoma, it was this type of spool pin.
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...psudm4pzmn.jpg

And it was on this type of base.
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...psmkputgng.jpg

The spring you posted goes over a regular spool pin to make the spool roll more evenly. Thank you though.

I had a little time yesterday to fiddle with the Singer 20U Industrial Zigzag machine that I bought at an auction a while back. I’ve set it up to sew upholstery-type fabric and vinyl with Tex70 thread. I played around with it sewing vinyl cut-outs onto a piece of old upholstery fabric in an appliqué fashion. I really like the wide zigzag for that, especially when the stitch length is dialed down short. However, when I tested the straight stitch at its longest setting, I’m getting 9-10 stitches per inch at the longest, and it’s supposed to sew 5 SPI. Something must be out of whack in the feed system....

CD in Oklahoma

I’ve kept pretty busy lately with sewing, and boy, the things you can run into. I had to repair 10 out of twelve Wrangler jeans hip pockets on three pair of jeans. The ripped hole is not much larger than a quarter on each one, but I usually go three widths around the hole to darn the backing denim good and solid to the existing denim fabric. That makes for a lot of sewing. Since I’m doing this on my Singer 319W treadle, I took two days to do them all. My treadle leg (I just use my right foot) wore out the first day before I was finished with them.

While my leg was recovering, I began sewing 26 embroidered shoulder patches on a batch of new police uniform shirts and coats. For that, I got to use our new-to-us Singer 431G freearm electric machine. Golly, I sure like that machine. It runs so smooth and quiet, it’s just a pleasure to operate. The shirts went fine, but the nylon coats were the pits, but it wasn’t the fault of the machine. The coats had a thin nylon “floating” liner in the sleeve that gave me fits keeping it straight. And the slickery new nylon doesn’t feed very well on feed dogs at all. But, I gottem done.

Then, I had to mend a pair of fashion jeans for a young lady, that has intentional rips in the legs that the edges of the rip is “frizzed out” as part of the fashion. Bare skin can be seen through the rips down the legs. That’s the fashion part of them. Well, one of the frizzed rips was a little too high, showing more than she wanted to show, so I had to put a backing piece of denim behind that rip and attach it without cutting off any of the frizzies. She also had the beginnings of a “blow-out” in another spot, but that was fairly easy to repair. Since these jeans are the new stretch jeans, I have to be careful that I stretch the jeans while I darn them, to make sure I don’t mend them to be smaller than they had been to start with. The darned area doesn’t have much stretch to it. I call it “darned”, but I’m actually using a multi-zigzag stitch with a very short stitch length. Lots of stitches in a small area.

CD in Oklahoma

CD - That sounds entirely too much like work....... Fun work, but work....

Aye, lots of work! I had a coworker recently approach me and ask if I could sew 40 patches onto 20 long-sleeve uniform shirts for some club he's in. I immediately said, "Nooooooooo"!

It would be way too much annoying work to try to sew 40 patches onto the sleeves - I'm not even sure how I'd do that without opening the sleeves up. Nope, nope, nope, not a job for me!

Not a job I'd want to take on either but if I had to do it I would cheat. I'd have my BFF digitize a stitch pattern for the shape of the patch and I'd sew them on a free arm embroidery machine.

Cari

Sneaky! But wouldn’t that would take all of the fun out of it?

Back in 2012, one of the state penal groups got new uniforms, and between them, the bikers, the Scouts, and a few medical personnel, my wife and I sewed 832 embroidered patches on that year. The penal patches came in groups of 150 to 250 (3 patches per garment) at a time. Nearly all, except the few biker patches, were sewn one patch at a time by me on a vintage 1970s Singer 834 Stylist, and the rest by my wife on a vintage 1950s Singer 401A. The biker patches were sewn (some by both of us) on one at a time with either a vintage 1960s Consew 225, or a vintage 1940s Singer 29K70.

It was interesting to see boxes full of uniform shirts and coats being wheeled in on a hand truck and stacked 5 high next to my sewing machine....and that happened three times....

We normally only sew 200-300 patches on per year.

CD in Oklahoma

Sneaky? I don't know about that, but my mom calls the embroidery machines cheaters. The kidlets call them Grammas magic machines.
There's no way I'd take on the number of patches you did. I'd be totally bored after about 50 of them, even if I cheated. That's why I only make so many of my yearly NFL items that I sell. I get bored making more than a few of the same thing.

Cari