Mini TOGA and The Pizza Cutter of Death

So.  In early August Linda called me to tell me that she and Missie had decided to meet up at my house.

(pause for laughter.  Linda is a Very Good Friend and I took it in the humorous spirit it was offered.)

Linda lives 2 hours south of me and Missie lives 2 hours north so it made perfect sense.  And I didn't make it to TOGA* this year because I was too busy whooping it up in Newfoundland on THE BEST TRIP OF MY LIFE.  Maybe I'll get around to showing you my vacation photos one of these days.  There are thousands of them.  You want to see them, right?  You want to see ALL of them, don't you?
No?  Wait, why are you running off like that?.....

*TOGA, Treadle On Gathering and Academy, the NC one held in Monroe NC in early June each year.

The weekend before the planned mini TOGA my grand-niece Carla was in town with her grandparents.  I knew that Linda was bringing her daughters and so I begged to be allowed to have Carla for the week.  There were big demands on her time that week!  Between helping babysit a 2 year old one day and going to the beach with her aunt and cousin another day she was kept quite busy.  But I had her for three of those day and one was with Linda and her daughters.

Carla and I prepared a craft activity in advance.  I introduced her to my studio and gave her the safety rules.  The most important one is:  Do not touch The Pizza Cutter of Death.

You may know it by its official name:  rotary cutter.  But Pizza Cutter of Death is the best name if you have kids in your studio, as I often do.  And the only kids who ever make it down there are kids I can trust not to be stupid or rambunctious.

I also tasked Carla with watching me to make sure that I closed the Pizza Cutter of Death EVERY SINGLE TIME I laid it back down on the table.  Good habits are your friends.  She caught me putting it down open only once.  Kids love it when adults mess up.  I didn't do it on purpose either, I genuinely messed up.

We prepared 12 inch squares of muslin for flower pounding by cutting the squares and then prepping the fabric with Bubble Jet Set then letting them dry.  The fresh flowers were from Walmart because nothing in my yard was blooming at the time.  The girls taped flat, or flattened portions, of the flowers to the fabric with masking tape and them turned them over and pounded them with hammers til the flowers disintegrated and the pigments bled through to the fabric.  I put out all of my hammers from tiny tack hammers to the big boys to the rubber mallets for them to experiment with.  It was loud.  They had fun.

The pictures showing all this fun that SHOULD be in this post aren't.  Because while the little girls were whacking things with hammers, the adult girls were upstairs looking at my antique treadles and hand cranks.  And nobody was taking pictures until they showed us their results.

And here's an artistic vision of my 1874 Wilson treadle.  No relation to Wheeler & Wilson.

The mini TOGA began with the arrival of Linda and her girls Tuesday night, continued Wednesday with arrival of Carla, Missie, and Barbara (sewing friend only 20 minutes from me), and finished up Thursday with only Missie and me.  Thursday night Carla got back from the beach and she and I spent Friday in the studio sewing.  We made a pillow from the embroidery that she worked on throughout the week.  And it is a present for her little sister!

Linda brought over a serger I gave her last year after I bought The Love Of My Life, a BabyLock Evolution serger.  More about that in a future post.  We changed the blade on the Simplicity serger that I had bought in the 1990s.  I used it A LOT and it was a great machine (but the Evolution has air threading and I will never serge again without it).  And I showed Linda the basics of serging and unloaded a bunch of fabrics on her from my stash.

All knit and she didn't take all of them.  I really needed to downsize and I have moved towards fabrics with 2 way stretch.  These are all one way.  All bought at thrift stores for no more than $1/yard.

Barbara also came over and while Linda and I were serging, she and Missie were tucking.

Since I missed out on that Missie trained me on the tuck marker the next day.

We began by planning to do a tutorial but I quickly chickened out.  Too lazy this time.

And we played with toys too of course.  While I was looking at this attachment through my lighted magnifier I noticed Missie in the background.  So, more artistic photos for you.  You're welcome.

And finally, here is a rare, (probably) never-before-seen photo of my workroom, the room where all the tools live.  And the sewing machines that are either waiting to be repaired, or repaired ones waiting to find new owners.

What are you up to now?  I am doing some Christmas sewing but obviously I can't show you any of that yet!

Happy Holidays!

Mini Kennies on Parade

Are you looking for a fun vintage machine to take to classes and workshops?  Don't want to spend $300 to $500 for a Singer Featherweight?  Consider the 3/4 size Kenmores.  They may not be as cute as the Featherweights, but the cases are WAY cuter.

The other major reason to buy a mini Kenmore?  Well, do you ever want to do more than just straight stitch?  If you have a Featherweight you are either out of luck, or you have to install an attachment.  And uninstall it if you want to go back to straight stitching.  Even the earliest of the mini Kennies had zigzag and the oh-so-useful blind hem stitch and a FEED DOG DROP, and from the 1040 onward they had several stitches.

So why is the Featherweight the most expensive vintage machine?  Good old law of supply and demand.  Quilters love them and thus they have become trendy among quilters.  Supply low, demand high = price high.  And they ARE undeniably cute.  I have three Featherweights myself, so I'm not dissing them.  (Didn't pay the high prices but two of them need some serious work and on the third I just got extremely lucky.)

Very few Kenmores have ever been accused of being cute, or even attractive.  There are some early exceptions but most of them are pretty boring looking.  The mini Kennies fall into the boring category, IMHO.  But they sell for reasonable prices.  For only a few more pounds (of weight, not currency) than the Featherweight you get a whole lot more functionality.

Featherweight, naked:  11 pounds
Featherweight, in its case, 15 pounds
Kenmore 1040, naked:  15 pounds
Kenmore in its case:  17 pounds

Last week Barbara came over and brought some of her mini Kennies.  She's a fan.  I have one myself and we did a side by side comparison.  Here are our results, with additional notes from "folklore", i.e. things we have read but have not personally confirmed.  And Barbara is the Mini Kennie expert so most of the folklore is from her online reading.

Introducing the 3/4 size Kenmores

Kenmore 1020

we don’t have one

folklore:  not many of them were made

Kenmore 1030

 

• low shank
• two tone green
• feed dogs drop
• stitch selector and stitch length are brown plastic 

• Stitches (in order) 

• Straight stitch, shown as round red dot
• multizig
• button hole right
• button hole top or bottom
• buttonhole left
  blind hem

• handwheel must be turned to release handwheel to wind bobbin (as opposed to the pull-out handwheel on the 1050)
• presser foot regulator controlled from the top of the machine

• needle plate is one piece with no pop-outs as later models have. So you have to have two full needle plates, one for straight stitching and one for zigzag.

• Rose embossed case

1030 accessories that came with machine

Barbara reports that the same set of accessories came with every mini Kennie

• extra needle plate not shown in photo
• bobbins
• edge stitcher on a post compatible with Greist hemmers and other Greist attachments
  • we tested the Kenmore post with some Greist attachments and they did work.
    This means that you can add that fantastic set of Greist hemmers in several sizes.
    
    
• straight stitch foot
• case with 12 sewing machine needles
• adjustable zipper foot
• set of five buttonhole templates
  
  

  

  
  
• seam ripper
• set of two screwdrivers
• needle threader (two are shown in photo, one of those is for a different Kenmore)

Kenmore 1040

 

• low shank
• two tone green
• stitch selector and stitch length are plastic painted silver

• Stitches in order
• straight. Marked “S” (not the round red dot on the 1030 and 1050)
• button hole right
• buttonhole top or bottom
• buttonhole left
• blind hem
• multizig
  stretch stitch (two forward one back)
  
  

  

• handwheel must be turned to release handwheel to wind bobbin (as opposed to the pull-out handwheel on the 1050)
• presser foot regulator controlled from the top of the machine

• Needle plate has a removable insert so you can switch between straight stitch and zigzag without removing the whole plate, a very dandy feature.  And I discovered that I don't have the straight stitch insert for my 1040.

• Feed dogs drop

• Rose embossed case

See 1030 for list of included attachments

Kenmore 1045

we don’t have one

Barbara thinks they added a stitch

Kenmore 1050 

Major innovations were included on this model,  including slot threading.  I'm a big fan of slot threading.

We've popped the top here and perhaps you can see the thread path.

• low shank
• feed dogs drop
• stitch selector and stitch length are plastic painted silver (we think)

• Stitches (in order)
• straight (round red dot)
• multizig
• blind hem
• zigzag
• ?1 decorative stitch
• ?2 decorative stitch
• ?3 decorative stitch
  

  we couldn't figure out what to call them. 
• stretch stitch (two forward one back)
• buttonhole right
• buttonhole top or bottom
  buttonhole left
  
  
  

  

  
  
  
  

  

  
  
  
• handwheel pulls out to wind bobbin
• presser foot pressure controlled by a numbered dial
• Needle plate has a removable insert so you can switch between straight stitch and zigzag without removing the whole plate.
• tensioner on inside, part of the slot threading system

• totally different look
• beige with dark brown trim
• Rose embossed case (the last model to use the rose case)

See 1030 for list of included attachments 

Kenmore 1060

we don’t have one

We have read that it has a free arm, so it had to be taller, so it doesn’t fit in the rose embossed case

Flip Out Tray 

 

This is almost certainly overkill,  but hey, we already took the photos and this tray HAS defeated me on more than one occasion.  So if you are also a bit 3-dimensionally impaired, here is the definitive guide for accessing, removing, and replacing the tray.

Lift up the cover.  You can remove it or not but it takes one of your two hands to hold it in place.  I usually remove it but here you see Barbara holding it up and out of the way.

Flip the tray forward.

Open the cover to access the goodies inside.

You can remove the entire tray.  But then you have to figure out how it goes back in.  This is the part that tends to exceed my brain capacity.

So here I have shown you the correct orientation for getting it back in.

Here it is in place.

And the cover sits on top.  The fact that the cover and the front of the tray is discolored and yellowing actually helps me figure out which part of the tray goes in front.

But if yours is also discolored and you want it looking better. Barbara discovered a way to brighten it up.  Here's what she says:

"I used the 'developer 40' creme (on Amazon).  You brush it on, put the part in a ziploc plastic bag, then leave out in the sun for 20 minutes.  Check and see if it has lightened.  If not, leave out for a bit longer, but check every 5-10 minutes.  When appropriately lightened, wash with soap and water and then place back on machine.  You want to watch the lightening carefully because you don't want to weaken the plastic.  There's a lot of information on Google and on YouTube.  It worked great for me.  I would be careful if applying to metal/paint - could bubble if left on too long and then you're sc*****."

And click here here for a post by Retrofixes describing the method, with photos.

Rose Embossed Case 

 

ooh, pretty

But not terribly easy to deal with.  Although I'm sure that if it was your go-to machine it would quickly become easy.

On both sides of the case flip the latch down, push the button above the latch and slide it open at the bottom of the case.  Then remove the case.

That part is fairly obvious and not too bad.  The fun starts when you want to put it back in the case.

First take a look at the inside of the case and you will see that the two sides are NOT the same.  The rubber bumpers at the hinge end are closer together on one side than  on the other side.

There are four possible ways to TRY to get the machine into the case, but only one of them will work!

Place the front of the case face down with the top of the case resting against the bumpers that are farther apart (the ones to the right in the photo above).  When closed the feet of the machine are going to be sticking out of the bottom of the case.

I did put a piece of painters tape inside the case telling me how to do this but I kinda forgot about taking a picture of it.

The piece of blue painters tape that you can see is to keep the tray from flipping out while you are wrangling the machine back into the case.

Then tuck the foot pedal/motor controller inside and you are ready to close up the case.

This is what it looks like if you get it wrong.

And this is what it looks like if you get it right.

*****************

Do you have one of these 3/4 size Kenmores?  How do you like it?  How do you use it?  For instance, do you take it to quilting classes or workshops?  Take it in your motor home?  Does it stay home with you?  Do tell us all about it!

Think you wanna be a blogger?

Hello dear readers.

Do you want to be a blogger?  You should give it a try.  You might have something worth saying that other people might want to hear.  Never know until you try.  And it's free.

There are a lot of good reasons to do it but that's not the reason for this post.  Let me know if you are interested in wandering down that rabbit hole.

But what I have to say today is just about the time commitment.

I have been working on an upcoming post about the Kenmores 1030, 1040 and 1050 and just happen to have kept track of how long it took.  You might or might not be surprised.

One blog post, one, repeat ONE has clocked in at 9 hours.

The first two hours were a fun playdate with Barbara, in which we did a side by side comparison of the three machines, taking photos and writing down the characteristics of the machines.

The next 7 hours included:

• Editing all the photos.  They might be rotated, cropped, brightened or all of the above.  It doesn't take long per photo to make them look a WHOLE lot better.  In a couple of photos I also added arrows or text to make things clearer.
• Creating a "new post" in Blogger. (takes seconds)
• Writing the text.  Re-writing the text. 
• Adding photos to the text.
• Realizing what was missing from the first photo shoot, getting the 1040 back out and taking more photos.
• Editing the additional photos
• Writing more text
• Emailing Barbara to ask questions about things I was unclear about.  Twice.
• Re-writing some more.

This was standard procedure.  When I first sat down to write the blog post I thought "Oh, this will be a snap because so much of the text is already written".  The notes from the playdate became the bulleted list of characteristics of each model.  But there was so much more to say and explain!  So it became just like all the other blog posts, which all take about this much time.

I'm not complaining btw.  I like doing this and there are those previously alluded to benefits.  But nobody pays me to do this and if I didn't want to do it, well, I just wouldn't.

Just thought you might be interested in the process, especially if you have thought about blogging.

If I was not an empty nest retired widow I seriously doubt if I would be doing this though.  Time is one resource I have plenty of, and this is one of the things I enjoy doing with it.

*******************
Do you blog?  Why not share a link with us in the comments section below.  And let me know if it also takes you this much time.

 Or if you want to blog, what do you want to cover in your blog?

******************
Edit:  the post on the 3/4 size Kenmores is scheduled to be published on October 6, 2019.

How to Market a Black 15 Clone

Distinguishing characteristics of the 15 clone

Hello dear readers.  Lots going on this summer and if I get a minute I'll blog about it.  Lol.

But as you continue to wait in suspense for the 2,000 photos of my trip to Newfoundland, here's something about sewing machines.  I know you are here for the sewing machines.

I have written about Singer 15s and their clones before.  And I wrote about them again when I was Interviewed by Leah Day for her video podcast.  Which you can watch here if you missed it last year.  Or if you just remember how good it was and want to watch it over and over again.  Kind of like Princess Bride.

I removed the original motor and added a modern hand crank to this one.

I got an email a couple of weeks ago from a quilt guild buddy who wants to offload an old machine and asked for advice about selling it.  I gave her the quickie version and now I am going to share the bad news with everyone here, which is

Good luck.  You are going to need it.

There are a bazillion (technical term) fantastic vintage sewing machines out there.  Millions and millions certainly.  At least half of them are straight stitch only machines.  And only 3 people in your state are looking for one*.

*not verified scientifically in any way, statement not subject to review or approval by any intergalactic legal authority.  Your mileage may vary.

Now quilters love Featherweights and so do I.  They love them because they are cute and trendy and portable and so do I.  They fall in love with that absolutely perfect straight stitch.  And fail to realize that grandma's old machine down in the basement will do the EXACT SAME PERFECT STRAIGHT STITCH.  There are serious engineering reasons why a straight stitcher makes a better straight stitch than a zigzagger but it boils down to this:  straight stitchers were designed to do only that one thing.  And they do it brilliantly.

I have been buying and selling vintage and antique machines for about 10 years, only as a hobby and I do NOT make money doing this even if you DON'T factor in the labor costs.  So I have some idea of what does not sell in my market (I'm halfway between Raleigh and Greensboro NC).

Vintage zigzag machines I can sell all day long (what that ACTUALLY means is that they only spend a week or two on CraigsList).  All my machines are fully serviced and guaranteed for 30 days btw, which helps them sell.  If they are a pretty color they sell better, and I ask more for them.  And sorry, but I never ever put any pricing info on this blog for a multitude of reasons.  But for the price I ask for an excellent vintage machine you could buy a plastic wonder from Walmart, designed to last for months rather than decades or centuries.

Vintage multistitch machines are a MUCH harder sell even though I tell buyers that we can set it up for the zigzag stitch and they never ever have to turn those scary dials for the other stitches.  Doesn't matter.  Many buyers find those extra functions intimidating and just don't want them.  Modern manufacturers seem to be missing this point btw.

Scary

Scarier

Scariest.  These are all the same machine btw.

As for the straight stitch only machines, I do sell the pretty colored ones, often to a savvy seamstress who is looking for an extra machine in her studio and knows why she wants it.

But I had no luck selling the much more plentiful black straight stitch only machines until I stumbled on a marketing strategy.  Which I am going to share with you after the disclaimer that after the first donor machine in the story I  have sold a grand total of TWO on the following basis.

Here's the story:
My friend Nancy asked me to check out her plastic machine.  When I went over there to pick it up her partner Don threw in a black 15 clone from his workshop.  It was a very sorry and beat up looking machine.  He said he just wanted to get rid of it and would I take it?

The front of Don's 15 clone BEFORE cleaning

Little did he know, mwahahahaha.....

So I cleaned and oiled Nancy's machine and reset the tensioner.  Machine was fine for a plastic machine.  Then I tackled Don's.  Thorough cleaning and oiling and maybe a new bobbin winder tire (this was years ago).  Replaced the slide plate.  Scraped off the flaking areas of paint and touched them up with a Sharpie oil paint marker (not a regular Sharpie).  I won't claim that it looked like a million bucks after that but it looked respectable.

The back of Don's 15 clone AFTER cleaning

And then I loaded a size 18 needle in it, which is the largest size that a domestic machine will take (and still work lol).  I wound a bobbin with heavy duty thread.  NOT buttonhole thread which has a waxy coating and is not meant for machine sewing.  I set both the upper tension and bobbin tension for that thread.  I got some heavy duty canvas and tested how many layers it would sew through.  And got that lovely perfect straight stitch.

When I took Nancy's machine back I also took back Don's. I explained to them which one was the better machine (although hers does do zigzag which is definitely a good thing).  I suggested that he keep his as a workshop machine and that it would be perfect for boat cushions, a project I knew he had done before.

And then I went on to sell other machines (uh, the aforementioned two) using the technique highlighted in bold above.  I have a standard description of the wonders of vintage machines I use for CraigsList ads and to that I add a headline of "Workshop Sewing Machine" and stress the heavy duty nature of it and mention the boat cushions.  I also advise that this is not an industrial and if they are planning to manufacture boat cushions (or whatever) and run a machine on heavy duty stuff all day for weeks at a time,  what they really need is an industrial.  But this model is perfect for home workshop use.

So Susan from guild, if you made it this far I hope this might be useful information for you.  And for all the vintage sewing machine addicts out there who also need to offload some machines, let me know if this marketing technique works for you.

I do my best to avoid accumulating black straight stitchers these days but if another one shows up on my front porch, this is how I will attempt to get rid of it.