Well, not really. Not here in Central Alberta anyway. We got about 10-12″ of the white sh…. stuff over the last weekend.
Ever had your bobbin case just fall out while you were sewing? You’re just sewing along, and the darn thing just gets up and leaves? Or maybe you’ve found it not snapped in when you’re positive that you installed it right.
No,.. chances are that you don’t need a new bobbin case. Continue reading Spring has sprung
In January, we found a Featherweight 222 in an Antique mall, on the way to visit my aunt. This is the followup to the find, and photos of the lovely lady.
Eliza is ready for her close up. When we were in Calgary, visiting my aunt in January, we learned that her serial number allocation date (as close as we can come to a birthdate on a Singer sewing machine) is February 26, 1957. On my aunt’s 3rd birthday. Because of that, we’re naming her Eliza. My aunt’s name is Liz, or Elizabeth.
She hasn’t been fully polished yet, but she’s completely returned to full working order and cleaned up. When we picked her up, she didn’t turn smoothly, someone had been into the bobbin area, and the dreaded “finger” was misplaced. There was also more movement in the hook area than there should have been. Lastly, the bobbin case was reassembled incorrectly, so the bobbin didn’t fit into it. She also had a little rust in weird places, on the chrome, a few of the screws, the bobbin case and the bobbin winder. We replaced the bobbin winder, and the rest had the rust removed from it, and a good oiling to discourage the rust returning.
Her body however Continue reading Followup to the 222 found at the Antique store.
What do you do when you’re sewing along and your machine’s tension goes crazy for no reason?
There are the obvious things to do: re-thread the machine, in case the thread “popped” out of one of the guides, or came unseated from the upper tensioner, clean out all of the fluff and lint from the machine, especially in the thread path ( don’t forget the bobbin case area) … sometimes you might even get desperate and clean out the upper tensioner.
If you don’t know how to do that, it’s really straight forward, and can save you a trip to the sewing machine repair shop.
But what do you do if you’ve done all of that and the tension’s still goofy? Especially if your top tension seems way too tight. Say you have it turned the upper tensioner all the way loose, and your thread is still laying on the top of your fabric… Continue reading Tear it down – bobbin case maintenance
Timing series part 6: The others
Two things I touched on but didn’t explore in detail are feed dog timing and how the timing on a shuttle bobbin works (Vibrating shuttle or transverse shuttles, also known as bullet and boat shuttles)
Feed dog timing is very straight forward – The feed dogs move the fabric. In order to do that effectively, the needle must be clear of the fabric before they start to move it.
