Vintage sewing machine attachment project: introduction

Thank you all for your feedback on the cover. This gives me something to work with, appreciate the time that those of you who left comments took to help me.

Now here is the introduction. I did these pictures myself by putting white paper on a shelf in the fridge and turning the inside of the fridge into a sort of light box. This was my own idea. Sewing teaches you to improvise.

So here we go. Let me know what you think!

Vintage sewing machine attachments for the modern sewist

The attachments designed for and heavily used by the home sewers from the early to mid+ 20^th can still be very useful to the modern sewist.

 To understand why requires first that the sewing person of today consider one very interesting idea- that we might have lost touch with some of our best technologies. We need to think of what we may have have left by the wayside in the assumption that newer, by definition, is always to be better.

This is why I think a modern sewist could benefit from learning more about vintage sewing machine attachments:

·      Vintage attachments work so well. No human is capable of stitching a hem with the stitches consistently 1/16” from the finished edge with the accuracy and ease of an adjustable hemmer. And certainly not capable of doing it simultaneously with folding up the hem too to an exact width – all without pinning or basting.

·      Vintage attachments are made so well. First, all of these vintage attachments are made of metal, carefully. Secondly they tend to all be incredibly ingeniously engineered – to manipulate the fabric in intricate ways under the constant of a straight stitch (or in the case of mid ‘60s buttonholers, also some zig zag stitches. So often purely mechanical methods of manipulating fabric are simply more consistent and precise. Metal grooves, the cam, or template leave no room for movement. In my view fancy zig zag stitch made with a drop-in cam will always be more accurate than one driven by electronics, which doesn’t have the same direct steady control over the needle.

·      Vintage attachments are inexpensive. Compared to newer attachments vintage attachments are a bargain. Look on eBay and Etsy and in box of attachments sold along with older machines at yard sales.

·      Vintage attachments can be used on your modern machine. Many older attachments were designed for straight stitch machines that had a low shank. A low shank is means a presser foot bar fairly close to the throat plate, measuring about ½” from the bottom of the presser foot to the centre of the screw that attaches the foot. Many commonly available machines, and certainly many older ones, have a low shank and can accommodate these feet directly. 

However most industrials and upper end modern machines have a high shank – the bottom to the foot to mid screw measurement is about 1”. If you have a low shank machine you can just use the vintage attachments. To fit the old attachment to a modern high machine all you have to do is purchase a shank adapter, in this case basically a shank extender, that will allow you to fit the older low shank attachment to a modern machine. Take your time and search out the shank adapter for your model – I have had great success with online sellers like www.sewingmachinesplus.com

There are even adapters for Bernina’s, which have their own breed of all-in-one feet, as opposed to the snap on time. Using a Bernina adapter I have been able to use all my low shank vintage feet on my Bernina. Note there are two exceptions to this rule. Really old machines, like treadles or rotary hooks like the classic Whites, use feet that attach with a toe clamp.

These feet will fit only those machines and can not to be adapted to any others.

This is what toe clamp attachments look like:

Finally there is another shank style to consider these are the slant shanks used in a series of machines Singer produced in large quantities in their factories in the 1960’s. Slant needle machines were designed for the larger work area they were able to provide in front of the foot (a very nice feature actually) but feet with a slant shank can fit only on those machines.

Many vintage attachments were also manufactured in both low and slant shank  form – just be careful to but a specific slant foot when sewing on a slant needle machine, like the Singer Rocketeer or Touch and Sew.

·      Vintage attachments open up to the possibility of including a vintage machine your sewing arsenal. Older machines are so easy to find and so inexpensive. In many cases, since they were made of metal, a good cleaning, oiling and a new needle are all they need to get them up and running. One of my own favourites, a 1960 Singer Rocketeer, was stored in a garage and a six year old and I cleaned and oiled it to perfection. These older machines often have a superb straight stitch, either because that is all they do, or because they have a much narrower opening in the throat plate for the swing of a zig zag – both of which contribute to a more secure and reliable straight stitch. Once of course you have experienced the potential of vintage attachments you might find it handy to have an older machine set up ready to use them – many sewists do this with the buttonhole attachments.

Favourite vintage sewing machine attachments and how to use them

What follows here is not a definitive guide to all older sewing machine attachments, but a list of those that might be most useful to the modern sewist, sewing the clothes we wear today. References to other sources on the subject are included in the bibliography.

Note many of these feet work by exaggerating the natural action of the feed dogs, either by pressing the fabric into them to force pick up as in the case of the shirring foot, or to use stitch length to form tiny pleats that look like gathers or mini pleats in the ruffler.  

Others are essentially elaborate devices to hold or set up fabric so it can be stitched with greater control, accuracy and regularity than is possible by a sewist operating free hand. The edge stitcher, narrow hemmer and adjustable hemmer fall into this category.

Finally a few other attachments are template driven mechanisms in themselves that actually move the fabric with precision under the needle, enabling highly accurate stitching of complex functional and decorative embroideries like monograms, motifs and of course the legendary template buttonholes, yet to be surpassed in quality by even the most expensive modern computerized machines.

Of the feet listed here the narrow hemmer, binder and ruffle are still manufactured and sold for contemporary machines. Of these only the ruffler, and some of the narrow hem feet made now, are the same as their vintage counter parts. (Modern binders are quite less sophisticated). All the other attachments listed here exist only in their vintage form – all excellent examples of “lost technology.”

Note although some of these attachments can just be attached just like any other presser foot some of the more complex ones with a lot of movement – the ruffler, buttonholer and monogrammer as examples – need to be both screwed onto the needle bar as well as having a stabilizing fork hooked over the needle screw. I find it always easier to fit this fork over the screw first and then screw on the rest of the attachment. 

Attachments will moving parts, like the ruffler and buttoholers also benefit from the occasional oiling with only a drop of oil at any points where you see metal moving against metal. 

Tulsa Vintage Sewing Machine Museum

My husband coordinating with the blue machines and purple fabrics

I took a lot of pictures in my visit to this museum and I will try to post as many as I can here, with annotations, before Blogger becomes saturated.

No particular order here. The over whelmingness I felt faced with nearly a thousand machines, many, many of them set up ready for test sewing, will become apparent.

Here we go. The operating hours can be erratic, this is the creation of one man who was having his lunch in his truck when we arrived but who helpfully told us where the hidden key was so we let ourselves in.

The entry arch, made from salvaged machines from a landfill

Wall art made from flywheels.

Do you recognize these? Some more wall art made from throat plates

Such neat and tidy industrial design

A well known name in industrial machines this time in a domestic model, beautiful metal dials and some zippy mid century modern detailing

Amazing the number of different sewing machine manufacturers

An accessory cupboard

Love the colour and the presentation

Neck really seemed to play around with alternate ideas, note here the work area is on the inside of the machine

Theses rotating throat plates for different stitches in the Necchi machines are crazy but interesting

An industrial leather machine

Industrial embroidery machine

 A tiny white featherweight in the room of children's machines

Another child's machine

And another one, note the care in display

My heart stopped when I saw this. 

When I was 8 years old our neighbour across the street gave me one exactly like this - she had brought it with her from Czechoslovakia. It made a chain stitch, no bobbin, and was held to the kitchen table (Formica) with one of my dad's vices from the garage. I turned the handle and poured out a ton of doll clothes that I sold to the neighbourhook kids for a nickel or a dime until the local mothers marched down and shut down my sweatshop.

It made a very nice stitch.

A baby treadle

One of the delights of the museum is the care in presentation. Here a row of pink machines on a pink shelf

The blue wall, my favourite

A lovely lady who came a very long way for my class.

An op. ed. in praise of older sewing machines and finding them on ebay

First off this is a shot of one of the storage bunks in the old R.V. 

Pretty normal looking. In my world at least.

 (BTW I have only been here a week those swag numbers are going as soon as I develop some enthusiasm for sewing something other than clothes, which itself is iffy).

Up there I have a Bernina Minimatic ($220) , a Pfaff 786 ($200 bought for my daughter) and a Pffaf Hobbylock ($130) 603A. I also have a Bernina Sport 701 at home. ($245)

I have put the prices in here because I want to make the point that first class machines can be bought for reasonable money. The Bernina Sport is my main machine at home (I gave my Pfaff 7570 embroidery machine to my daughter, the Sport has a better straight stitch IMO and is so smooth). The 786 is going home to my daughter, the 603A (a three thread and has never been used, still has the styrofoam on it) and the Minimatic are going to stay here and wait for me to come down every year.

All are older machines, all were bought on eBay. All are first class machines and work impeccably. With some cleaning and lubricating done by me and the husband they have never had official service work since I bought them.

Now here's the op. ed. part (in the newspaper business an op ed is an opinion editorial which means its printed on the editorial page but was submitted, and the editors want to make sure you know it is just some nut's own ideas.)

These are my personal opinions on sewing machines bought second hand (I could write lots about that particular industry just let me know if you want more).

I worked once a very long time ago as a sort of free lance educational consultant for Pfaff and had a turn or two being a Vanna White to the service manager when he was doing technical training sessions. I picked up a few things.

So starting somewhere, probably in the middle and leaving some stuff out, here is how I go about finding a really good machine on eBay.

1. I only look for really strong mechanical (as in the parts are metal) older machines, made in Europe. The Germans and Swiss had great machinist traditions and good steel and excellent, although different hooks (the stuff under where the bobbin is).  

I look for Pfaffs or Berninas for that reason and nothing newer than about 20 years or so. It helps to know the model numbers. Feel free to let me know if you have other ideas but I tend to go for a Bernina 700 or 800 series (be careful you are getting the older machines, they are recycling these numbers in newer machines to emulate the classics). You just can't beat that stitch IMO. 

Pfaff also had some great mechanical models but you want to find one with the IDF, the built in walking foot that was Pfaff's claim to fame until the patent ran out a few years ago and other companies could use the idea (Janome for example). 

Understand that some in a line like the Bernina Record 830 have great cache but that mechanically all machines in that line are the same inside, just a few features are different.

One Pfaff I like is the 6091, a strong basic machine about 20 years old that was their entry level with the built in dual feed.

For sergers I like the Pfaff 786 and 788, great machines with a neat feature like you just have to change the foot to go from an overlock to a rolled hem (why did they stop making that? So easy). I also like the early Bernettes by Bernina (all sergers were always made in the east, the best ones in Japan, some by Juki in those days, none were ever made in Europe) which has a swing foot which makes threading the needle a breeze. The older sergers can be less user friendly but are reliable.

I have to tell you I would avoid an Elna serger (if I taught a class these were absolutely always the fussy ones) but would consider an older Juki, they after all made and make so many of the industrial sergers and know what they are doing.


2. I would never buy an kind of computerized machine sight unseen. If there are any issues with those machines you have to replace the boards (easy to do they generally snap in and out) but many of those boards just aren't being made anymore or if you can find one can be more expensive than the machine.

3. I tend to favour sellers who look like they are doing estate type sales (you can pick this up by what else they are selling), sometimes a dealer has a trade they oil up, replace the needle and post it and charge too much. Don't panic if they say the foot pedal is lost or the foot is missing. These are generally pretty easy to find at a good price on ebay and usually mean the machine was left aside rather than worked to death. (I basically got my Sport as a body only and assembled the missing parts and came in about half what the complete machine would have cost me).

That said it is interesting to see what they offer with the machine. Original box can be a good sign, as is the original manual.

4. What to look for when you have the machine. Well these are all very good, but precise, strong machines and assuming the electricals are all right the main issue is that they may be stiff because they are dry. The rule is to oil, just a bit but often, parts where metal moves against metal. Open it up, Bernina is easy for this, and apply the oil where they have little red dots and where metal is moving on metal, including the hook in the bobbin. And of course put in a new needle.

My strong recommendation is to go online and buy a service manual for the machine you have bought (usually about $10-15 ) and follow the instructions carefully for opening up the machine and oiling and cleaning it. 

There are two things you should never do:

1. Use anything but a fine machine oil on the machine. A good oil is clear and is air soluble. You can buy this online. Make sure it is clear and for sewing machines and get it from a sewing machine site. Do not under any circumstances use yellow, mulitpurpose type oil, or household oil or even the general machine oil your old time dealer may try to sell you. That kind of oil will just get hard over time, never evaporate, and gunk up the machine. Actually a neglected machine is a better buy that one that got misused with the best of intentions
2. Let anyone handy in the family near it. Just because unnamed person did a great job fixing the lawnmower and has some great oil out in the garage does not mean they are the safe person to be working on your machine. A careful woman with the sense to look at a service manual may do a better job. I once saw a serger that had the timing off that a husband had "fixed" by shaving off the parts that were hitting each other. You get my drift.

Finally know when you need professional help. Although I believe you need this less than you think (most service jobs are about needle changing and oiling to be truthful) you absolutely need someone with the right gauges to fix timing.

Timing means that the parts have to move in the right sequence at high speeds with just passing each other exactly where they are supposed to can do that without crashing into each other. If they crash that means the timing is off and everything has to be loosened up, parts that are broken and bent replaced, and set up with the right measurements between the parts so it won't happen again. (You see how technical I am). 

You know you have a timing problem (most common in sergers) if you see and hear pieces hitting each other, things stop.

You are most likely to have timing problems if a machine has bent needles or, tellingly in sewing machines, scratches along the throat plate, usually from someone "helping the machine along" or trying to keep going through too many layers.

So that's it. 

Bottom line the best machines may be the least expensive if your think about it.

Disclaimer to this op. ed.: 

Of course there are many good new machines out there but let's face it if you all you want is a nice sewing machine with a beautiful stitch and can live without needle down, thread cutters and embroidery stitches, they are out there.