The Spartans

Lucky me, I had a Singer Spartan given to me and here's her story of restoration. So what is a Spartan sewing machine and why that name?  A definition of spartan is suggestive of the ancient Spartans; sternly disciplined and rigorously simple, frugal, or austere. That does define this little sewing machine with minimal decorations:

Singer Spartan 192K

It reminds me of a Singer 99 but it is actually a 192K, made in Great Britain. Bob and Jane found this machine and hoped it could be used by immigrants they were working with but it never seemed to come together and now they hoped I could get it in shape and find it a new home. Cosmetically it was great but there were other problems.

The black plastic base has spacers all around the edge that hold the machine in place but two of them were broken off. I tried using E6000 glue but the machine is just too heavy but they didn't break off, just sunk down, too low to support the machine on one end. After a few weeks on my work table I came up with a solution: cut a wood bloc the right size and put it in place on the low side. It was easy and worked great as you can see in the photo above there is no low end.

The tension was off as well as the movement of the feed dogs but I finally got everything all limbered up and running right. Then, out of the blue, one of the thread guides snapped off. Do you think I could find one in my parts box? Of course not, but there were others yet they all needed to be screwed on and the hole was not threaded. Out came a hand drill and I made the hole bigger to accept a very tiny screw for the guide. I'm not telling you which thread guide it is and hope you can't tell but it's holding so far.

I needed to test the machine out and couldn't think of a better way than to sew up a cover for it since it came without a plastic lid. Actually, it looks like there never was one since there are no latches on the base. Here's what the stitching looks like:

Stitches inside of the cover

Top stitching on the outside

I was pretty happy with the cover by the time I finished, adding the piping to give it more shape and definition around the bottom edge:

Robert Kaufman print of spools and needles: so cute!

The Spartans really are austere: no light either! Even the wiring is directly from the motor, no separate power cords. I put together some accessories and covered the box with a black marble print sticky paper:

Accessories needed for sewing machines: bobbins and needles

and will print out the manual that is only four pages. Four pages! Yes, that is spartan. It won't need to be bound but maybe I can add some basic sewing instructions to make it more substantial and not get lost or tossed.

A big thanks to Bob and Jane for their generous hearts in donating this little cutie. Also in their garage was a treadle cabinet that was missing drawers but was still possibly worth restoring. Not a Singer, but maybe a New Home so not impossible to find those drawers somewhere. There's always another project around the corner, isn't there? Here's one last look at the Spartan:

Spartan, Singer 192K