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| Vintage Singer Sewing Machine |
BIG FUN!
So I finally got around to trying out the treadle machine -- I sewed a few seams, and tried out the new buttonholer Lisa got me for our anniversary.
It's awesome.
The machine runs through 6-8 layers of denim like butter. The buttonholer is a marvel of engineering -- that a machine with no zigzag ability could make a perfect buttonhole (straight or keyhole) is awesome.
I'm very excited. :-) Now I'm going through the other attachments that came with the machine: hem rolling foot, variable width hemmer, ruffler, binder, tucker, width guide, and a couple of things I'm not sure what they are yet. :-) My goal is to try each of them out and get them to work.
My next project is a collared shirt -- I'm going to try to make the whole thing on the treadle (I may cheat and finish the seams using my Kenmore with zigzagging, but other than that...)
Big fun. :-)
2 comments:
Holy Crapola,
You are a brave man! Still, don't you just love the motion of the treadle machine. I love the way it sounds and the way it works. Mu Mom has her mothers, and I used it a few times. I remember the sound of it and how my grandma could just make that thing rock!
Cool that you enjoy it so!
It turned out to be pretty easy: not much harder than yo-yo-ing.
I'm excited about it, partly because it's a machine that's meant to work. The new machines, especially entry-level ones I have experience with, really seem like you aren't really meant to seriously use them. They can't sew half of the heavy duty stuff you actually want to sew, and the setup seems like nobody actually tried using them for household sewing.
The old Singer 15-88 has that elegance and utilitarianism that makes me really happy: all metal means you can ram it through pretty much anything you want to sew. You can adjust the pressure of the presser foot, so you can sew odd stuff. It's even got a thread cutter attached to the presser bar arm. And it came (stock) with a wide selection of presser feet (hemmer, ruffler, etc) that somebody would actually use to make stuff with.
Ultimately, it's a machine to sew stuff with, rather than a machine to own and keep in a cupboard.
Very exciting. :-)
-Shawn.
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