Going in circles

There's been some talk on Treadleon about circular stitchers. I was intrigued so I looked them up to find it's a pretty cool foot you can easily buy:

Flower Stitcher attachment for low shank sewing machines

This one attaches to most low shank sewing machines and allows you to stitch in a circle. Not real impressive on a straight stitch sewing machine but when you try this on a machine with cams or other built in stitch variations, it can be pretty cool. My Googling of this object also brought me to the Singer Circular Stitcher and then I remembered I already had one. I found it on a shelf with various buttonhole attachments and such but it did not look like the one above:

Singer Circular Stitcher #161847 (note pin on far left side)

The box stated it was for Singer Touch & Sew sewing machines but I found out that only referred to the size of the screw that attaches it to the bed of the sewing machine. Since I had been working on a Kenmore model 54, I tried it out and found the holes sizes were just fine so away I went.

First you have to figure out how wide, or narrow, a circle you can make. I found out the smallest circle was almost four inches due to the adjusting rod hitting the edge of the device:

Rod with measurements at closest mark (note pin is covered)

Since this was just for fun and experimentation, I'm okay with that but it is pretty limiting. I understand the one above that is a foot attachment can only make small circles so maybe there is a combination of these two devices that will really work out nice. For today I got it going with a scallop:

Row one with a scallop

The part that looks like a push pin is the center of the circle so everything pivots around it. The first photo of the circular stitches shows the pin open and the second photo shows it with the cap back on. You don't need to push it along but do need to guide it. It seems the feed dogs aren't fully engaged or something and it needed a bit of help. Next up was an inner circle with a different cam and color of thread and then I discovered it couldn't go any smaller so I finished it off with the outside ring in a third cam and color:

Final round in bight color thread

Where the circle comes around to join is a bit of a crap shoot so there is a definite art to making it come back to the exact point at the right part of the stitch! I popped off my sample, cut around the edge and called it a beginners success:

Ta Da: it's a circle of......stitches?

Now I'm anxious to think up projects that could use this technique and you bet I'm ordering one of those attachment foot style stitchers to see what I can do with it. It's kinda fun and would have a different result with an Elna SU or a Bernina Record, don't you think? It was a nice little project for a Sunday afternoon while it was raining outside. What did you do on a rainy summer afternoon?