Sewing Room

Every stitcher should take pride in her sewing room.  It is a place to relax, and let the world go away, while you create pretty things.  Things to look at, use or wear.  The choice is yours.  There are so many easy patterns out there for the beginner. 

If you are a beginner, start with an easy pattern, with simple sewing lines, or just start using old scraps to make a nice easy quilt top. 

 Once you learn to do simple work, you can apply your skills to a more challenging project.

Stitching

-The Needle's Excellency

I have made a few quilts of which I am proud of. One is the Flying Geese
The origin of this wonderfully simple pattern is unclear. The large triangle undoubtedly represents a wedge of wild geese on its migratory flight. Autumn Geese represents geese fling south driven by the chill winds of autumn; A Springtime Geese tells of their return when soft spring breeze replace winter's cold. Best loved quilt patterns.

-- by John Taylor (1634)

In sewing, a seam is the line where two or more layers of fabric are held together by stitching. 
Sewing is an ancient craft involving the stitching of cloth, animal skins, furs, or other materials, using needle and thread.

Heirloom sewing is a needlework technique that arose in the last quarter of the 20th century that imitates fine French hand sewing of the period 1890-1920 using a sewing machine and manufactured trims.

Heirloom sewing is characterized by fine, often sheer, usually white cotton or linen fabrics trimmed with an assortment of lace, insertions, tucks, narrow ribbon, and smocking, imitating such hand-work techniques as white work embroidery, Broderie Anglaise, and hemstitching.

Typical projects for heirloom sewing include children's garments (especially christening gowns), women's blouses, wedding gowns, and lingerie.

Slide show of some of my work 

Sewing Machine Maintenance

Vintage and antique sewing machines may need a bit more maintenance than modern machines, but their care and feeding aren't complicated. Here are some suggestions for sewing machine maintenance, based on my experience.

• Oil your machine in accordance with its amount of use. Frequent use frequent oiling. Use good quality sewing machine oil, not multi-purpose oil or WD-40. Remember the kindergarten adage: "just a drop, not a lot". If you don't have an oiling diagram for your machine, a general rule of thumb is to oil everywhere that metal parts rub against each other; if there are holes in your machine head, they are most likely oil ports and will also need a drop of oil. Bobbin winders and hand crank mechanisms usually have oil ports also. Some machines have felt oil wicks, often in the bobbin area - place a drop of oil on the wick. Don't forget to oil the treadle!
• Clean lint and bits of thread from your machine on a frequent basis. A large, new make-up brush is great for sweeping lint from hard-to-reach places under the machine or in the bobbin case. The bobbin area is always prone to lint build-up, so don't neglect cleaning there - especially before you begin a new project. On long shuttle machines, dust out the shuttle itself; it may be necessary to unscrew the tension device to remove bits of broken thread or lint. Hint: unscrew the tension spring over a magnetic pincushion - it may help prevent the loss of that tiny screw!
• Use good quality thread. Generally, pre-1900 machines prefer 100% cotton sewing thread (especially transverse shuttle machines); later machines seem to do fine with cotton-wrapped polyester thread. Inexpensive thread is made with shorter-staple cotton. It is not as smooth (it often looks fuzzy on the spool or cone) and is prone to breakage. Cotton quilting thread is usually coated with a substance to make hand-quilting smoother - but the substance is likely to gum up your sewing machine.
• Use the tension release lever. If your machine has a lever to release the tension on the upper thread so you can remove the work - get in the habit of using it! This lever is usually located on the upper tension dial. On other machines, the upper thread tension is released when the presser foot is lifted.
• Never pull thread backwards through the tension discs when unthreading the machine - it's a good way to jam up the discs with lint or pieces of thread. Instead, always snip the thread near the spool and pull the thread out gently from the last thread guide before the needle. Pulling the thread through the needle can cause needle breakage.
• Follow the same procedure for the bobbin case or shuttle:  carefully remove the bobbin, cut the thread, and gently pull the end of the thread forward out of the tension device.
   
• Don't forget to change sewing needles periodically. Again, changing before each new project is a good rule of thumb. Store needles in a dry place to avoid rust and corrosion.
• Sewing over pins is not recommended! Go ahead and use a magnetized pin-catcher - there's no computer to damage on your people-powered sewing machine!
• If your machine needs dusting, use a soft cloth. I don't recommend furniture polish on the machine head, but a dust-attracting product (such as Endust) could be sprayed on the dust-cloth if necessary.
• Cover machines with their coffin or bentwood top when not in use, or use some type of dust cover. Plastic dust covers may retain moisture and cause rust, so fabric covers are probably a better idea.
• The wooden parts of your machine need care, too. Keep the wood clean and dusted, and moisturize periodically with good-quality furniture polish or wax (Howard's Feed and Wax is one example).

 Sewing machine
A modern machine (Singer Symphonie 300)A sewing machine is a mechanical (or electromechanical) device that joins fabric using thread. Sewing machines make a stitch, called a sewing-machine stitch, usually using two threads although machines exist that stitch using one, three, four or more threads.

Sewing machines can make a great variety of plain or patterned stitches. They include means for gripping, supporting, and conveying the fabric past the sewing needle to form the stitch pattern. Most home sewing machines, and some industrial machines, use a two thread stitch called the lockstitch. Most industrial machined use an over-lock stitch produced by a machine sometimes referred to as a serger. Some older machines produce a chain stitch.

The fabric shifting mechanism may be a simple work guide or may be pattern-controlled (e.g., jacquard type). Some machines can create embroidery-type stitches. Some have a work holder frame. Some have a work feeder that can move along a curved path, while others have a work feeder with a work clamp.

History of the sewing machine

Needle plate, foot and transporter of a sewing machine 
Singer sewing machine (detail 1) 
Singer sewing machine (detail 2)Before the invention of a usable machine for sewing or dress design, everything was sewn by hand. Most early attempts tried to replicate this hand sewing method and were generally a failure. Some looked to embroidery, where the needle was used to produce decorative, not joining stitches. This needle was altered to create a fine steel hook – called an agulha in Portugal and aguja in Spain. This was called a crochet in France and could be used to create a form of chain stitch. This was possible because when the needle was pushed partly through fabric and withdrawn, it left a loop of thread. The following stitch would pass through this first loop whilst creating a loop of its own for the next stitch, this resembled a chain – hence the name.

The first known attempt at a mechanical device for sewing was by the German born Charles Fredrick Wiesenthal, who was working in England. He was awarded British Patent No. 701 in 1755 for a double pointed needle with an eye at one end. This needle was designed to be passed through the cloth by a pair of mechanical fingers and grasped on the other side by a second pair. This method of recreating the hand sewing method suffered from the problem of the needle going right through the fabric, meaning the full length of the thread had to do so as well. The mechanical limitations meant that the thread had to be kept short, needing frequent stops to renew the supply.

In 1790 British Patent No. 1764 was awarded to Thomas Saint, a cabinetmaker of London. Due to several other patents dealing with leather and products to treat leather, the patent was filed under "Glues & Varnishes" and was not discovered until 1873 by Mr. Newton Wilson. Wilson built a replica to the patent's specifications and it had to be heavily modified before the machine would stitch – suggesting that Saint never actually made a machine of his own. Saint's design had the overhead arm for the needle and a form of tensioning system, which was to become a common feature of later machines.

There were various attempts and patents awarded for chain stitch machines of varying types from 1795-1830, none of which were used to any degree of success – many of which didn't work correctly at all. A French tailor Barthelemy Thimonnier made the next major breakthrough. He did not try to replicate the human hand stitch, looking instead for a way of finding a stitch, which could be made quickly and easily by machine. His machine worked by using a horizontal arm mounted on a vertical reciprocating bar, the needle-bar projected from the end of the horizontal arm.

The cloth was supported on a hollow, horizontal fixed arm, with a hole on the topside, which the needle projected through at the lowest part of its stroke. Inside the arm was a hook, which partly rotated at each stroke in order to wrap the thread (fed from the bobbin onto the hook) around the needle at each stroke. The needle then carried the thread back through the cloth with the upward motion of its stroke. This formed the chain stitch, which held the cloth together.

The machine was powered by means of a foot pedal. The easiest way to describe this is to picture the machine working upside-down from how sewing machines are generally thought of today – the stitch was formed on the top of the cloth, not the bottom as with most other chain stitch machine made since. Thimonnier was awarded a French patent in 1830 and 80 of these machines were installed in a factory in Paris to stitch Soldiers clothing. Other tailors concerned for their livelihood invaded the factory and smashed the machines.

Chain stitch has one major drawback – it is very weak, the stitch can easily be pulled apart. A stitch more suited to machine production was needed, it was found in the lock stitch. A lock stitch is created by two separate threads interlocking through the two layers of fabric, resulting in a stitch, which looks the same from both sides of the fabric. Although the credit for the lock stitch machine is generally given to Elias Howe, Walter Hunt first developed it over ten years before in 1834. His machine used an eye-pointed needle (with the eye and the point on the same end) carrying the upper thread, and a shuttle carrying the lower thread. The curved needle moved through the fabric horizontally, leaving the loop as it withdrew. The shuttle passed through the loop, interlocking the thread. The feed let the machine down – requiring the machine to be stopped frequently to set up again. Hunt grew bored with his machine and sold it without bothering to patent it.


Elias Howe patented his machine in 1846; using a similar method to Hunt's, except the fabric was held vertically. The major improvement he made was to put a groove in the needle running away from the point, starting from the eye. After a lengthy stint in England trying to attract interest for his machine he returned to America to find various people infringing his patent. He eventually won his case in 1854 and was awarded the right to claim royalties from the manufacturers using ideas covered in his patent. Isaac Merritt Singer has become synonymous with the sewing machine. Trained as an engineer, he saw a rotary sewing machine being repaired in a Boston shop. He thought it to be clumsy and promptly set out to design a better one. His machine used a flying shuttle instead of a rotary one; the needle was mounted vertically and included a presser foot to hold the cloth in place. It had a fixed arm to hold the needle and included a basic tensioning system.

This machine combined elements of Thimonnier’s, Hunts and Howe’s machines. He was granted an American Patent in 1851 and it was suggested he patent the foot pedal (or Treadle) used to power some of his machines, however it had been in use for too long for a patent to be issued. When Howe learned of Singer’s machine he took him to court. Howe won and Singer was forced to pay a lump sum for all machines already produced. Singer then took out a license under Howe’s patent and paid him $15 per machine. Singer then entered a joint partnership with a lawyer named Edward Clark, and they formed the first hire purchase scheme to allow people to afford their machines. Meanwhile Allen Wilson had developed a reciprocating shuttle, which was an improvement over Singer’s and Howe’s. However, John Bradshaw had patented a similar device and was threatening to sue. Wilson decided to change track and try a new method. He went into partnership with Nathaniel Wheeler to produce a machine with a rotary hook instead of a shuttle. This was far quieter and smoother than the other methods and the Wheeler and Wilson Company produced more machines in 1850s and 1860s than any other manufacturer. Wilson also invented the four-motion feed mechanism; this is still seen on every machine today. This had a forward, down, back, and up motion, which drew the cloth through in an even and smooth motion. Through the 1850s more and more companies were being formed and were trying to sue each other. Charles Miller patented the first machine to stitch buttonholes (US10609). In 1856 the Sewing Machine Combination was formed, consisting of Singer, Howe, Wheeler and Wilson, and Grover and Baker. These four companies pooled their patents, meaning that all the other manufacturers had to obtain a license and pay $15 per machine. This lasted until 1877 when the last patent expired.

James Edward Allen Gibbs (1829-19502), a farmer from Raphine in Rockbridge County, Virginia who patented the first chain-stitch single-thread sewing machine on June 2, 1857. In partnership with James Wilcox, Gibbs became a principal in Wilcox & Gibbs Sewing Machine Company. Wilcox & Gibbs commercial sewing machines are still made and used in the 21st century.

Sewing machines continued being made to roughly the same design, with more lavish decoration appearing until well into the 1900s when the first electric machines started to appear. At first these were standard machines with a motor strapped on the side. As more homes gained power, these became more popular and the motor was gradually introduced into the casing.

Modern machines are computer controlled and use stepper motors or sequential cams to achieve very complex patterns. Most of these are now made in Asia and the market is becoming more specialized, as fewer families own a sewing machine.

• Nancy's Notions company web site
• Sewing With Nancy TV show web site

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