Slick

I'm on a roll with making bags and all kinds of hunting/fishing gear for carrying and storing stuff. On Saturday I buzzed over to Ellie's to pick up some vinyl she was going to give away and then had to figure out what to do with it. Because of the size of the pieces, I took the biggest of the heavier pieces and decided to make up a bag to replace a taped up plastic bag. That's right, my husband was using a large plastic bag from Fleet Farm to haul around a sleeping bag and other bedding. When it developed holes he used packing tape to hold it together but it was about at the end of its life when I spied it in the laundry room. We could do better than this. It took under four hours on a Saturday night to come up with this:

Long view of his new gear bag

Short end to show off the zipper

The size was determined by the biggest piece of vinyl I had and I took suggestions for the handle placement. I wanted it to be sealed up pretty tight so suggested a zipper closing rather than Velcro or grommets. Time will tell how this holds up, especially in our cold climate.

 Not wanting to let any grass grow under my feet, I tried my hand at a vinyl bag like the cloth ones I've been making:

Front of bag laid flat

Back, or inside, of bag

Finished bag with lining

I'm not that crazy about vinyl bags myself so I was hoping a cloth lining would give a softer feel with the durability and waterproof features of the vinyl. It sure gives it more personality than the plain vinyl but hunters and fishermen don't care about personality. This bag is for a woman! I even made the side seams with a flatfell seam so it would be smooth and finished inside, a must to hide the shape edges of the vinyl. That was difficult on the last side but it can be done.

When I stopped by Ellie's she also had saved some attachments for me:

Kenmore cams, attachments, and booklets

I almost made a trip last week to pick up some of the same from a CL ad but had to cancel when I figured out how far the drive would have been. Now I'm glad I waited! My sister also sent a fun package of zippers, a walking foot labeled "New Home", and a plastic Singer box, the likes I have never seen before:

Plastic divided Singer box

All fun additions that will go with machines down the way. Hang onto those odds bits: you never know when the right machine will come along. It will, trust me.

Free as in Free-Motion

We are having another busy weekend with continued home repairs during this mild weather but I have managed to spend some evening hours sewing and getting ready for the River Rat TOGA in Lake City. Cindy put out a request for new pot holders for the church kitchen and you would think I could whip them out in record time since I sell quilted pot holders but not so. I wanted to bring standard sized pot holders that anyone could grab and use for the oven and to set something hot on. My hot mitts are great but can cause some people to pause and ask how-do-these-work? While I was contemplating this I was also getting ready for another session with the quilt group in Cambridge, Friends First Quilters. I combined those activities by demonstrating free-motion sewing with making pot holders for a fruitful demonstration.

Friends First Quilters are a great group of women who love to quilt and set aside one Saturday morning each month to sew. They also have guest speakers and I've been privileged to talk to them about vintage sewing machines, sewing machine attachments, and specialty feet. This time I focused on free-motion sewing, bias tape binders, and circle stitchers. The free motion was the most fun and everyone who wanted to try it out could step up to the machine and give it a try. So many times we don't try things out because we don't have all of the equipment and don't know how to get started. I cut all of that out by having it all ready to go. What did we practice on? A pot holder, of course:

Free motion practice on a quilting sandwich

We started out on two layers of cotton but once they tried it we quickly graduated to something closer to the thickness you would use on a typical quilt.This one was two layers of cotton batting with an Insulbright layer between. It wasn't too bad for a first try, so I brought it home and added bias tape and made up another one:

Pot holders quilted with a free-motion technique

Next up was a circular stitcher I wrote about in Going in Circles. I finally got my flower stitcher and it has been fun to play around with:

Flower stitcher attachment with sample circles/flowers

I'm still practicing with this one and have to admit I need to read the instructions more carefully. We also looked at my set of 32 presser feet and tried out the bias tape binder and concluded it worked best when your edges were all neatly cut. I had a great time and even had a book give away for The Sewing Machine Accessory Bible, a great book with good instructions on how to use the various sewing machine attachments.

Just as the title says but it's not THE holy book

Now which sewing machine did I bring to try out all of these items? Why, a Kenmore, of course. One of my new ones, the Kenmore 158-1320, came to me running great and it's such a good basic machine:

Kenmore 158-1320

All of the attachments worked fine, taking into consideration user error (my error), and it was a standard low shank machine. It doesn't have a wide variety of stitches:

Kenmore 158-1320 stitch dial

but all of the basic utility stitches plus one stretch stitch. I really like these old Kenmore's and knew it would be reliable, too. It is also nice to demonstrate n a non-fancy sewing machine so there is no excuse for demoing on a high end model that can do everything but wash your dishes. There's more to tell about my trip to Cambridge but I'll save that for next time when I show you the Singer 401A and what's happening with it and if I decide to make it a parts machine or not. But that's for another day...

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?

Read The Manual

While I was visiting last weekend in Illinois, I asked my sister, Mindy, if she would bring along the sewing machine that she was having trouble with since we were going to be together.  Her answer of "Which one?" stopped me in my tracks: which one? How many aren't working? "All of them" was her answer. Since I gave her one in November I asked her to bring that one since I was familiar with it, a White 1899. In a previous series of texts she said the same thing keeps happening to all of her sewing machines: the thread underneath is always big globs of loops and a real mess. I asked her to think about that for a minute: all were doing the same thing, new, old, computerized, manual? Yes. I couldn't help but ask if it was possible she was making the same mistake over and over again and she said sure, it was probably user error.

White 1899 (not my photo)

We sat down together with her White 1899, a manual sewing machine that was easy to use and pretty nice, actually. Loops on the bottom generally means a machine was threaded wrong so I followed the thread path to find it had missed the take up lever. It was one of those open loop types of lever, not one where you only have a hole and it cannot jump out of place. I asked if she had the print manual and she did so I suggested she needed to go back and read it to see how it should be threaded. Oh. Well, there was a reason, actually, because she got the machine with the walking foot attached and it just never worked and she thought it best to leave it alone. That is a good reason so you don't mess anything up. I checked things over, we both sewed on it to see how nice it could work, tried out two different walking feet and found one that worked much better. While we were at it, I checked out all of the different feet that came with the machine and told her what they were for and how she could use them. It was a mini-lesson like the one I've given the quilt group up north and have been asked to give again in September (yea!). She was fascinated with what could be done but I had to stop and remind her: all of this is in the print manual. Read the manual. We are all guilty of not using the resources right in front of us, myself included. When I told her about the chart I made up of the 32 different presser feet and how to use them with video clips she was interested in the chart and asked if it could be printed off. Well, no, because the strength was in the video clips and somehow those don't print off. But that has given me an idea of printing off the names of the feet and a brief how-to in only a photo or two. Until then, I have the chart that I will share with you again in case you haven't seen it yet.

Presser Feet Chart

While I was at it I checked to see if I could use the dropped feet dogs and try out a little free motion sewing. There was no darning presser foot so it was "bare needle" sewing and I am happy to report that it worked! Practice does make perfect, or at least better. It probably never was the sewing machine or the presser foot but my own lack of skill. Yup, I'm becoming a free motion fool:

Not the best of handwriting but it is legible!

It's never too late to teach an old dog new tricks.

Footloose in Cambridge

I made my way back to the quilt group in Cambridge, MN on a very cold Saturday morning to talk about all of those attachments you get with your sewing machine but rarely use.

All packed up but only 3 sewing machines

 It was a small group this time so they could just gather their chairs in a semi-circle as I talked about sewing machine feet they might not have used before. But first we had a game:

Name that foot!

Each foot had a number and there were half sheets of paper with 1-12 listed and suggestions at the bottom for the possible names (with extras that didn't get used just to confuse them). As I talked about a foot I gave the answer for the quiz and then we talked about how it could be used. I'm as guilty as anyone for not using my sewing machine feet when they are called for but, in my defense, my trusty Kenmore didn't have many extra feet. Imagine my surprise when my Viking 1100 called for the blind hem foot and it worked so much nicer than just a zigzag foot. There was a purpose behind all those different configurations! I had learned to make a rolled hem just by sheer practice but the rolled hem foot made it so much easier and without clocking 30 hours of practice over the years!

We talked about walking feet attachments and many brought theirs out to show me since this was an extra that wasn't very well understood, plus it looks a bit scary!

Viking 1100 walking foot attachment

The purpose it to place a set of feed dogs on the top of your fabric just like there is already a set of feed dogs under your fabric. Both sets now move the fabric instead of only the bottom single set. What's the big deal? It keeps your fabric even so when you get to the end of the seam the top fabric and bottom fabric are still even instead of the top fabric a tad longer. This is great with a quilt sandwich (layers of fabric with batting between) to keep all layers even but also works great for matching plaids (and keeping them matched).

One of the women had a Pfaff with the IDT system which is an integrated dual feed foot so she had a built in walking foot:

Pfaff IDT (see back hinged part)

She didn't know that's what she had so was very pleased to learn she had one of the best deals around for keeping fabrics together as she sewed. We worked on getting her machine to use the darning/free motion embroidery foot but I'm not very good at it yet so could only get her started and from there is was going to be practice, practice, practice. Some day I'm going to learn this technique!

The last big surprise for the women was using the gathering foot. There are different models with the big older type:

Greist ruffler

and also a shirring foot with a small single hole that will gather fabric as it stitches:

Greist shirring foot

But I had discovered another foot that Bernina has with the gathering capacity as the shirring foot but with a slot to put another piece of fabric or ribbon that does not gather but just gets sewn on top!

Gathers with flat grosgrain ribbon on top

I pointed out that this was the first time I had used this foot and it still looked pretty good so think how it might look with practice! It only sews the ribbon on one edge and I went back to sew down the other edge so it would be secure (didn't want to mislead anyone).

Afterwards I went around and talked with some of the women about their machines and any questions they might have and there were questions. We looked at the free motion foot, where to oil a Featherweight, and how to get a free manual for a Bernina 1130. They continued to work while I packed up and headed back home again, satisfied with teaching about these great machines whether old or new. I learn something new every time and think they did, too, so it was time well spent.

Who won the game? Why, we all did!

Zig Zagging Along

A recent post on a Facebook sewing page showed a zig zag attachment for a Kenmore sewing machine and I became intrigued. So those straight stitch models can zig zag after all? Well, that depends. Singer came out with a zig zag attachment years ago and one came with my own beloved Singer 99 gifted to me by my next door neighbors. I did try it out at the time but memory grows dim over time so maybe it was a good substitute for a full zig zag sewing machine? After all, the buttonhole attachment kits are wonderful so why not the zig zag attachments?

Checking Ebay for said Kenmore zig zag attachments, I found several that were going to be under $15 with S&H included so maybe I should try one! In the listing was also the Chadwick zig zagger and I remembered I had one already, part of a group of supplies that came in a machine this past year. I set up a Singer 99 in crinkle finish and got it installed:

Chadwick model in a pretty small box

It's not too much to look at, installing like a buttonholer or a ruffler (but it's so shiny!)

Back screw adjusts for width, only adjustment available.

As you can see by the sample above and below, it's not a great zig zag stitch:

Widest width and closest stitch

Not too great is it?  The way it works is to move the fabric left and right since the needle cannot move in those directions to form the typical zig zag. This means it's not going to work too well on a variety of fabrics but the firm woven should be ideal. So on to the Singer zig zagger attachment. Here it is in the original box with 4 cams for the different styles of stitches:

Singer Zig Zagger

With this model you have choices, which is nice but still not a great improvement:

Singer Zig zagger in action

Cams lined up with the stitches they made

The gold stitching is brighter in person so I apologize for the faintness of the stitches but they are uneven at best and these were the best it could do with a lot of adjusting. It's a far cry from the Singer 401 models and their fine zig zag and we won't even get into Bernina and its superb stitching. Would I use this with a straight stitch model? Maybe if that was all I had and needed to use a zig zag stitch to do some mending but at one time this probably was all some women had and were excited and grateful to have even this much.

Am I going to order one of those Kenmore zig zag attachments? I don't think so...but if one comes with a sewing machine one day I will give it a whirl to see if it's worth it's salt. Until then, I'll stitch with built in stitches or learn to mend without a zig zag stitch. See how spoiled I am?

Composition

I'm no writer even if I was editor of my high school newspaper. As it turns out, I work with a whole group of people who have literature and journalism backgrounds so most of the serious writing tasks go to them. In my private life I find I'm writing all the time when I post ads for my sewing machines and for my sewn items on Etsy. Yet it's always nice to sell a sewing machine without having to take photos, write it all up and keep it posted. Last night was a winner in the let's-keep-it-easy department.

I posted an ad for a copper colored Carlton and got a response by dinner time. She was coming right after work so I set it up and tested it out while making dinner of BLT's and last summer's green beans. This lovely Japanese woman brought her husband along and they both looked closely at the Carlton but were not so happy that it was only straight stitch. Oops. I didn't write that in the ad but it always looks so evident to me when there's no lever for stitch width control. Did I have a zigzag machine? You bet! I brought up, amidst their offers to help me carry it, the Hamilton:

Hamilton in blue

The Hamilton sounds so nice, with a bit of a zit zit zit sound and makes a very nice stitch, plus it has the 4-step buttonhole with one of the best end products I've ever seen: perfect buttonholes! She was sold but then asked if I had others because she had a friend... so we looked at what I had in my showroom living room. The two Kenmore's, fully loaded, were too intimidating, so we went over to the Dressmaker in the Straovarious cabinet I refinished last fall:

Dressmaker SAMB

Straovarious cabinet refinished

She liked it, so much in fact, that this one was going to be hers and the Hamilton was going to her friend who had small children and would be more difficult for her to come and look for herself. The Dressmaker was in an ad that had expired and I knew I was going to have to start all over again so imagine my relief knowing it had now found a new home. She like that it had a manual and a box of specialty feet that the Carlton did not have so after they left I remedied the situation. I dug around in my collection of feet and found a wonderful set of Singer attachments that fit the Carlton:

Extra feet plus needles and bobbins!

I have another post about how to use many of the special feet and it is are fun for the straight stitch models to have extra features like the ruffler and bias binder. I corrected the Carlton ad to say straight stitch but also added the extra feet as a bonus. Whew! One hour after dinner and two sewing machines walked out the door and another got an upgrade. Not bad for an evening at home with my hubby and collection of sewing machines. Here's the Carlton in all her copper colored glory:

Carlton before she took residence in a new case

Isn't she pretty? There's a new home for her yet, just waiting patiently.

Special Order

I've been busy finishing up a special order from a November craft fair, something that I was told I didn't need to have finished until after Christmas. It is well after Christmas, but now the pot holders are finally done:

18 hot mitts with 2 towels

She wanted to pick out her own fabric so I've had fun with this print of vintage kitchey items in aqua, orange and yellow. As I got towards the end I remembered I had some extra towels in those colors so I made up two towel holders. She doesn't need to buy them, doesn't need to buy any of the hot mitts if she changes her mind. Eighteen is a LOT of pot holders but she said she has many sisters and sister-in-laws and they would not be for Christmas anyway.

This brings me to making buttonholes on the Singer 201 I was using, a straight stitch sewing machine that did a great job with all those thicknesses, especially with a walking foot to keep the fabric from sliding and ending up crooked. Singer made a number of models of buttonhole attachments and I have several but opted for one that was somewhat beat-up just to see if it would still work:

Singer buttonhole attachment for low shank sewing machines

The plate screws down to cover the feed dogs, even if they can be lowered. I tried it without and it just went nowhere. Next the cam is inserted into its underbelly, snapped shut, and wrestled onto the presser foot shank. At the same time you are trying to get this monster on the shank you need to "slip" the arm mechanism over the needle bar screw. By that time you need to stop for a break and take a few deep breaths. A sample buttonhole was made and then I went right to the towel loops:

buttonhole under orange button

That's pretty tiny to see so I took a short one minute video of the machine in action. Note how the fabric moves from side to side for the zigzag:

Pretty cool, huh? This is thanks to a high school friend who helped me get this video work done. It's my first video for my blog! Be prepared to see other demonstrations from now on.

Vintage fabric,vintage sewing machine, vintage buttonholer: I'm becoming a vintage kind of girl, but of course, I remember those days, too. Next up: aprons from vintage patterns, another special order!

Dollars and Cents

I love what I do. Buying, refurbishing, and (hopefully) selling vintage sewing machines has become a hobby that makes money. Sort of. Since we have passed the end of the year, I now need to pay taxes on what I've sold and that includes craft fair items and sewing machines. When I have my personal taxes done I come prepared with all of my expenses and sales as well as labor charges (sometimes I only perform labor, no sales) and that will tell the real tale. Do I make a profit? Not last year but I think this year I just might have. This takes us to the question of how much money do I make off of the machine I sell to you? Now we are getting personal!

Stories are told of finding highly sought after sewing machines for a mere pittance and the joy of bringing it back into working order. What a find! For example, a sewing machine was only $3 at a thrift store because it was half price day or I could use a seniors discount. I take it home and find I need to do some major cleaning, oiling, and adjusting, about 4 hours of work. Because it came with no accessories I have to either purchase a set of feet and bobbins or see if I can put together a set from my own supplies. These might come from a donor machine or if there were extras with another machine but they are worth at lease $5-7. New needles need to be a part of every sewing machine and those do have a cost even if I use 50% off coupons. Now my bargain sewing machine has run me about $15 plus 4 hours of time. This is a basic run-of-the-mill example but most are not so easy and need rewiring of the foot control/motor/light that can take anywhere from one to four hours with the cost of the wire and new plugs adding up. Does the wooden box need a recover job? What kind of shape is the cabinet in? Can it be restored or does it need a full strip-down and refinishing? It's not just the time either but all of this takes supplies that get used up and need to be bought again and again.

I have a set of shelves of sewing machines that are all ready for someone to take home and begin sewing. I take one off the shelf and get it ready for a photo session, which used to mean putting it on a table and taking up to 10 photos with my phone's camera. If I plan it right, I can now use my husbands new camera and set up the tripod, staging area with backdrops, lights on poles, and photograph more than one sewing machine while I have it all set up. Photos have to be downloaded to my computer, cropped, and edited in many ways. Now comes the fun part: setting up an ad for my local Craigslist. Each ad needs proper wording to put the best features forward and to be as descriptive as possible. Here's one ad:

Vintage White brand sewing machine in a cool zebra striped portable case. This sleek sewing machine makes great stitches, looks in near perfect shape, has all metal inside and out for long wear. The custom covering on the portable case gives this machine a new and clean feel. Includes a box of accessories and foot control. Has been cleaned, oiled, and tested so you will not have to take it in for service but just get ready to sew. Give this sewing machine a test drive to see what you are missing!  

This White sewing machine is an animal!

Each photo shoot and ad takes at least an hour of my time and skill. If you have been adding this up you will see that even a bargain sewing machine in good shape takes a considerable amount of time and sometimes money to bring it to the buying public.

How about pricing: how do I decided what to charge? This is usually based on the market, looking at other similar sewing machines and seeing what they are listing for and using Ebay sold items price. That $3 sewing machines is selling for $50 on Ebay and I have invested $20 and 8 hours of time. Can I price it for $150? Sure, but it will sit on my shelf. So I price it to sell and put a price tag of only $40 on it thinking it would be a nice addition to a collector, beginning sewer, or to fill a special aspect of someone's herd of sewing machines. You can see that I'm not making much money on this but I get to work and play with each machine and have the privilege to place it in someone's hands, hopefully, to make it productive again or open up a world of sewing to a beginner. That might sound hokey to some but I really do like to match up each person looking for a sewing machine to the right machine. The look of delight in their eyes when they walk out the door with their treasure is pretty wonderful.

Now for the hard part. Negotiation. Most people are not taking into account all of the above and just want a sewing machine for a bargain: that's why they are using Craigslist, right? But when that $40 sewing machine, that now works great, is posted I really do think it's a bargain price. But I frequently get asked if I can go lower, like to $25. Of course I can, but I'm reluctant to let this now nice sewing machine walk out my door with only $10 going into my kitty. All that work for $10? With my asking price I'm only making $25 and that's for about a days work on it. If you want a bargain you can get that sewing machine at a thrift store like I did and take it home with you, spending your spare time getting it into shape. Don't have the skill or time? That's what you are paying me for, my skill and time. It's nice when you honor my request for a price as fair because you are not getting cheated and I'm not getting rich with my hobby/business. Trust me.

These Feet Were Made For Walkin'

Not exactly the Nancy Sinatra song "There Boots Were Made for Walkin'" but this post is about walking feet and walking feet sewing machines, the Pfaff 1222 with IDT specifically. IDT = Independent Dual Transport is the Pfaff way of saying "built-in walking foot system" instead of an attachment you put on the back in place of your regular foot. Here's what a regular walking foot looks like and then one on a Viking 1100:

Generic Walking Foot

Viking Walking Foot

The idea behind a walking foot is to keep fabric layers from slipping away from each other as you sew. In normal sewing, the feed dogs (those grippy things that stick up out of the needle plate) move the fabric along on the bottom while the presser foot keeps things steady on top. You might have noticed when you get to the end of some seams they no longer match up but the top is now  longer than the bottom, having slipped forward as you were sewing. What happened? The top layer did not move at the same pace as the bottom and this especially happens on multiple layers such as in quilting. Here's an example from a toaster cover I've been experimenting with:

Front: no walking foot on left

Back: no walking foot on left

On the front it's not as obvious but the top slipped down so now the top and bottom layers (with Insulbrite in the center) do not match up causing more trimming and waste. On the back side it's quite obvious that without a walking foot it did not feed right. The walking foot has the same kind of gippy surface you have on the feed dogs so now you have feed dogs on the bottom of your fabric layers and on the top for even feeding. Pretty ingenious!

So what's on the right of these examples? They were sewn with a Pfaff 1222 with the IDT functioning as it should, feeding the fabric evenly on top and bottom:

Pfaff 1222 with IDT

Why not just get a walking foot for the sewing machine you love best? That is a good plan but I found the machines didn't like the added-on walking foot, having tried it on a half dozen sewing machines. The Viking model did work well but it was quite a bit of a strain on the machine and I got the feeling if I used this as often as I needed to for my craft show side of the business it would cause a breakdown of the Viking 1100. The Pfaff is intended for use of a walking foot and handles this one perfectly. You can disengage the IDT with a release lever but I only did that once and said "Why not use it all the time?" and went back to using it for all sewing on this model. It should work well when matching plaids, to keep them matched as intended with careful pinning.

Here's what the sample toaster cover looked like in the end:

Waverly fabric with a food theme

Side front of toaster cover

Not bad as a prototype but will have to see if I can speed up the process and make them able to fit a variety of toasters. Do I go to the store and try mine on various models? Send it home with co-workers for test-toasting? We shall see but I'm making them all with the Pfaff and the "Independent Dual Transport" system engaged!