Smaller on the INSIDE!

This week signals a special landmark in my tailoring work.

Up until now all my tailoring has been done in classic cottage industry fashion on the kitchen table - literally! In fact that was a step up from when I did the Mk I Tennant Coat, which had been made on the floor of our spare room, spending my whole time hunched over the sewing machine. Not good for your posture I can tell you!

From the Mk II I managed to get promotion to the kitchen table, as it was the only decent space in the house where I could lay out a large enough expanse of fabric to properly cut the cloth for a Tennant Coat and that has been where I have worked ever since (see above, while finishing the last garment made in the kitchen).

This has been all very well, but after a while, and an increasing amount of work being taken on, it started to become a little unpopular with my partner, who would repeatedly find a light dusting of fabric fluff covering the work surfaces of the kitchen . . . There wasn’t really much I could do about this, as cutting and working with fabrics produced dust and fluff as well as stray off-cuts of cotton.

Since I have started offering Five Trousers for sale, and knowing of some other projects I have in the pipeline, it became inevitable that I would need to find a dedicated room in the house to work in.

Currently we have been using the third bedroom as a study/computer room, and our second/spare bedroom as general laundry room.

A quick rejig moved the computers upstairs to the spare room, freeing up the study to become my sewing room, but I would need some proper furniture to work on.

When I was using the kitchen table, it served for both laying out and cutting, as well as sewing (see right, while laying out the back of a Tennant Coat). This meant I had to plan my day and do all my cutting first before setting up the sewing machine for work. However, if I needed to re-cut a pattern piece and had to clear the decks from sewing before doing the cutting then set the sewing machine up again to sew. In this move I wanted to have a separate sewing and cutting table.

Luckily the kitchen table was pretty sturdy, especially since my sewing machine is a fairly chunky, and when I am had been cranking away it set up quite a rocking action on the table.

However, when buying a new table to use in the sew room, we needed to find something up to the job, but not too expensive - a cheap Ikea table would just not do it.

I then had a minor brain-wave, and realized the best thing to do would be to find a proper Singer treadle sewing table on eBay!

As most stipulate a collection-only I had to limit my searches to a reasonable striking distance. It wasn’t too long before I found the “perfect” table. It had only been used as a piece of decorative furniture in a country cottage, so had been polished and looked after (see right, in-steu at seller’s house). It also, and more important for me, had three drawers either side where most only had one, giving me six drawers to store my bit and pieces as well as my treasured buttonhole attachment. This would make my move to the smaller sized study even more space efficient.

The item was described as follow:

HAS BEEN USED FOR THE PAST 8 YEARS AS A PIECE OF FURNITURE IN A PERIOD PROPERTY. STILL IN WORKING ORDER ALTHOUGH THE RUBBER BELT THAT DRIVES THE TREADMILL HAS NOW BROKEN AND WOULD NEED REPLACING. HAS 6 SMALL DRAWERS AND MEASURES 37" WIDE, 29" HIGH AND 18" DEEP. A FEW KNOCKS AND SCRATCHES IN THE WOODWORK AND MACHINE HAS BEEN WELL WORN IN YEARS GONE BY. STILL A LOVELY PIECE OF HISTORY AND A GREAT LOOKING PIECE OF FURNITURE. PLEASE NOTE: THIS ITEM IS READY FOR COLLECTION BETWEEN TUESDAY 1ST SEPTEMBER AND TUESDAY 9TH SEPTEMBER ONLY - DUE TO HOUSE MOVE.

I bided my time and bid for it on the last day and managed to snipe it for £77, which although it was maybe a little more than I had hope to pay, did give me a table in good condition with above average drawer space. I was pretty chuffed to have won it.

There then followed the irritating story that sometimes is all to familiar with eBay purchases. It was clearly mentioned in the listing that collection had to be between certain dates as the seller was moving house and this item would not fit in the living room of their new property. This was to be a good two weeks after the auction closed, which is all fine and up front. I paid straight away to ensure my part of the bargain was kept. I was given the sellers phone number and I called her to work out a date, which we set and I was to await the address when we confirmed a few days before collection.

I waited until the week before to find I could not raise her on her mobile, and she consistently failed to respond to my messages and emails. I was getting worried. I didn’t want to loose out on this table so did not want to file a non-recipt claim.

Then, suddenly two days before the planned collection date I got a text message from her to confirm the pick-up, but with no address details. I replied with no response and it wasn’t until the night before collection did I finally get an address to go to to collect.

We went along and picked up the table with surgical precision - in and out with minimum of fuss - I was just relieved to finally get my new sewing table after waiting for nearly three weeks.

We got it home, lugged it up the stairs and put it in its final resting place in pride of place in my new sewing room. It looked fab!

The table came with a 99K machine already in place which had never been used (see left). It is a much later machine to mine and has a pill-box bobbin rather than the shuttle type I am used to and prefer.

The machine was no real use to me, not even for spares, so I took it off and put my prized 27K in its place (see right).

I knew from the listing that the leather strap that would power the sewing machine had perished and was no good. A quick eBay search found a seller who stocks newly made spare parts and had a suitable treadle belt I could use. It was on a Buy It Now, so I had possession of it in a couple of days and I was able to give it a go.

I had never operated a Singer using a treadle before, so it was a steep learning curve to say the least. After finding that you need to manually start it off to get it turning in the right direction, I was soon rocking away with my feet with both hands free to handle the work being sewn.

Great as this is, I think even when I am proficient at it, I will still hand-crank some of the more delicate and critical part of my tailoring, as the treadle can run away with you and before you know it you are steaming though beyond where you wanted to stop.

Finally, we had a spare drop-leaf table, which although was not as strong as the kitchen table, did give a equal opened area on which I could cut. Since the sewing machine has its own dedicated stand, this table is more than suitable for what I need, so I now have my desired separation between cutting and sewing (see right).

I now have an area where I can work (in peace) and out of the way, though it is smaller on the inside compared to the kitchen.

Wish I had Time Lord technology . . .

After some searching I found the official User Manual for the Singer Treadle, which after a couple of pages digressess onto the contents of a Singer Puzzle box. If you want to read it, you can download it here:

Singer Treadle User Manual

The Return Of Steampunk

Over on my Tennant Coat Blog I showed off the 1903 Singer 27K sewing machine I use for all my work.

Though it was not this actual machine, it was a hand-crank Singer 27K that I first learnt how to sew when I was around ten years old.

I was always interested how something that could essential only stitch in a straight line could produce such wonderful three-dimensional and tactile objects, such as the rag dolls my Mother would make for me and other family members in the late 60s and early 70s. I still have a clown made for me as a Christmas present when I was about five years old in 1971, and a girl in petticoats my Mother made for herself (see right).

If you want to read more about the Singer 27K that I use,
you can download a PDF of the original manual HERE.

For years I was resigned to the fact that a straight line it did, and a straight line it would always do.

When I bought my 27K for around £30 off eBay, it had not been used for a number of years, having remained safely in it case hidden away under the stairs of the previous owner. It just needed a little bit of oil here and there, and it was working as perfectly as the day it had been made.

You can’t say that about many things built even over the past 30, maybe 50 years: that after a century it still works! What DVD player is still going to be working in 100 years time?

With the wonders of eBay I discovered an array of attachments that I never knew existed.

The best example of this is what is known as a Singer Puzzle Box (see above right). It is a wooden box with opens out completely flat (see above), inside which are secured a number of hemming, ruffle and spacing attachments.

You can download a PDF of a detailed list of the contents HERE.

Alas, I could only get a few of them to work, and the ones I could, I have little use for.

I acquired them more a curios than anything else.

As I mentioned in No Steampunk Here, I used to get my buttonholes done at an old-fashioned tailors back in my home town of Edgware, North London. That was until I found my treasured Singer Buttonholer! (see left)

It really is the cleverest of tools and can produce buttonholes to a range of sizes and proportions. It had never occurred to me that my straight-stitching machine could possible do anything as complex as a buttonhole, given the side-to-side movement that would be needed.

As well as doing standard buttonholes, the attachment can have other useful applications.

I recently used it to do some reinforcing stitching around the pockets and fly of my Six Trousers, by effectively collapsing a buttonhole down to a single line of tightly placed zig-zags (see right).

If you want to read more about how the Buttonholer works,
you can download a PDF of the original manual HERE.

One of the next hurdles to overcome in making my trousers was setting the zip fly.

This is made more difficult because it is essential to sew as close to the zip teeth as possible. The standard pressure foot (which keeps the work moving under the needle while you sew) has the tendancy to not work well with one side of it sitting on the zip and the other unsupported. As a result it tends to fall of the zip and veer off in the wrong direction.

I knew there would be a special foot for this, and sure enough there is.

I tracked one down to a specialist sewing machine repair shop called Chapman Sewing Machine Company, at 80 Parkway near Camden Town. I described the machine I had and what I needed. Sure enough to my amazement, still make zipper feet which fit my machine and they had a dozen or so in stock.

The zipper foot simply has only a pressure foot on one side of the needle. Above you can see my standard pressure foot (left) and the zipper foot (right). Notice how the standard foot is riding on the teeth of the zip.

The foot is further designed to be adjusted, so that it sits on either side of the needle, making it useable if the zip is running on the left or right hand side (see below).

You will see this in use when I make the Five Trousers, and later when I get to do the Tennant Trousers.

While at Chapman’s I thought nothing ventured nothing gained, and wondered if there was such thing as a Zig-Zag attachment.

The movement of my buttonholer was twofold: an elongated circular motion (to form the buttonhole shape); and a side-to-side movement (to create the band of overlock stitch that reinforces the edges of the hole).

I wondered if there was a tool that just did the side-to-side movement, and sure enough there is.

The shop assistant had to ask the advice of the septuagenarian owner, who rummaged around and pulled out a box similar to my buttonholer, but slightly smaller.

Inside was what looked like a baby buttonholer with considerably fewer adjustment sliders (see right).

The one slider it does have (below) adjusts the width of the zig-zag.

My hope was to use it to do an overlocking stitch along the seam allowance inside the legs of the trousers to stop them fraying (you will see this in most commercially available trousers).

However, although I have got the attachment working, it is proving a little erratic and hard to control. I can barely get it to sew along a pre-determined line, let alone along the edge of frayed fabric.

I think I need I little more practice . . . .

No steampunk here - this is the real thing!

Just before I embark on making the next coat, I thought I'd share with you the sewing machines I work on.

When I was young my Mother had an old hand-crank Singer sewing machine which had been passed down to her from my Father's Grand-Mother. I would watch in awe as she would use it to make various cushion covers, bed spreads etc, wondering how this machine could make such neat, tight stitching.

It wasn't too long (aged about 10 or 12) that I got to use it myself so I could make my own Muppets (I had become a fan of the tv series at the time).

I soon became proficient at using it and have always used one ever since. I just cannot imagine using an electric machine. I prefer the connection I feel when using a hand-crank machine. You turn the handle a quarter turn, and the needle drops just enough to lock with the thread below. I am always worried the slightest touch of an electric machine and it would run away from me, powering though fabric I was not ready to sew.

Sadly following my parents' divorce, the machine went back to my Father's side of the family, and my Mother had to fins a new one, which she eventually did, in the window of a local charity shop.

It wasn't a patch on her original one though, being a later, more lightweight, and as a result, less powerful machine. It did the job though - and I would borrow it from time to time.

When I was getting into making my own Tennant coats, I found my own machine for £10 at a car boot sale, held as part of the worst village fete I have ever been to. I cannot describe how rubbish it was. It was like the one seen in The Vicar Of Dibley - but less professional. For example, one of the prizes in the tombola was a bag of Walker's Crisps!

However, the event did give me my first Singer machine, so I can't complain too much!

This was, like my Mother's, a later model, and didn't sew that tight, which could be annoying.

I then trawled eBay to see what I could find there, and before long I had tracked down the EXACT same model as my Mother had owned back in the 1970s. I think I paid about £30 for this one - but it was worth EVERY penny!

It was so nice to get back behind a machine that had some welly. Where my first machine would falter at thick material, this just breezed through.

I did some research on the internet, and found this webpage:

SINGER: machine serial numbers

Every Singer machine has a serial number on a little plate attached to it. Mine is S229566.

Looking on that site, I found it was model 27K and had been made in the early part of 1906 in their Kilbowie factory on Clydebank, Scotland as part of a run of 60,000 machines. So it is over a HUNDRED years old!!!

And as a testiment to how well they were built, it worked absolutely first time (after applying a little oil as TLC). You can't say that about many things out there - still working well at 103 years old.

I made and completed the Mk III on this prize machine.

The only problem with these machines is that they can only stitch in a straight line, so fancy stitching is out of the question and sewing a buttonhole is a pipe-dream.

To solve the buttonhole problem, I have used an old fashioned tailor called Mr Michael I used to use in my home town of Edgware, North London. It's only a few miles from where I now live, and he does not charge much for doing them for me, though they are never sewn that firm, and it is a bit pot luck as to what colour thread he uses.

It was a bit funny the first time I took on of my Tennant coats in to get the buttonholes done. I  don't like to blow my trumpet too much, so I just took it in and without any fuss just asked him to put the buttonholes in for me. He looked at me a bit oddly. Then he said 'You bought a coat, and it doesn't come with BUTTONHOLES?' Then I realized, yeah, that would be a bit odd! So I had to confess that I had made it. He was impressed - which made me blush.

When I got to the Mk III coat, I added the buttoning detail to the back slit below the waistline. I realized that I needed to get these buttonholes down while the coat was still being made, rather than waiting until it was complete. This would be a pain, as Mr Michael asks for at least a week to get it done, which would hold me up.

I then wondered if I could find a cheap electric machine on which could just do buttonholes. The cheapest I found was still not cheap enough, so I looked on eBay to see if I could find a second-hand one a little cheaper. (I hoped my Singer machine would forgive me for looking for a new fanggled electric machine).

My jaw dropped when I did my search: there were a couple of buttonhole ATTACHMENTS for the old Singer machines. I found a UK seller, and bid on one, which I won for around £15 inc postage. 

When it arrived, it came in a small branded box, and still had its original instruction manual. It seem to be complete and after following the directions, I had it attached to my machine and gave it a go. After adjusting the torque control until it was strong enough to drive the attachment, I sewed my first buttonhole. To be honest, it was crap, but I could see the potential was there!

Re-reading the manual gave me clues as to how to get a better result, and before long I was knocking out some pretty decent, presentable buttonholes.

It was amazing to think that all these years I had thought that there could never possibly be a way to sew a buttonhole on a Singer hand-crank, but the technology had been there the whole time, but I didn't know it existed!!!

I was later showing it to a friend who has a modern electric machine, and she told me that she can do a buttonhole, but it was one size and shape, with no option to change it. 

The attachment I had - which is at least 60 years old, maybe older, has various sliders and pivots which allow you to alter the length and width of the hole; how wide the lines are set apart; how wide the stitching is - all the things to make a perfect buttonhole!!