Posted 6 years ago
Shutack
(2 items)
I found this old box with my great grandma's singer plus there is a lot more stuff that goes with it as well. It is one weird box because of the way you open it. The box is from the 1800s as well. They made things back in the day that would really last
This was an important accessory for the machine! The design of the box let it fold open with every accessory secured in it's own space, not in a jumble (as some are now). You have a graduated set of "hem turners": the seamstress would feed the fabric to be hemmed into the attachment and as the fabric rolled over the curved edge, the needle came down upon the fabric, stitching a beautifully even rolled hem!
You also have a gathering attachment which was adjustable to make ruffles as full as you chose them to be. You have an attachment to make perfectly evenly spaced pleats.
Most women sewed their families clothes back then. If the family had a little more money, they might hire a seamstress to do the sewing. Next up the ladder of being well-off was to have store-bought clothes.
Having your family well dressed was a matter of pride to a woman.
Making frilly holiday dresses for your daughters was the mark of an accomplished wife and mother.
Making school clothes was a job that started weeks before school started and going to fabric departments or fabric stores was a fun and exciting thing to do!
Girls learned from their elders how to sew, how to pick out patterns and the right weights of fabric/designs of fabric to go with the pattern. Buttons, thread, snaps, hooks, zippers....you bought all that to finish out the garment. Knowing how to place the fabric on the pattern, measure to make adjustments in size, match up stripes or plaids when they intersected at a seam...oh, so much more which was just considered common knowledge in my youth, which doesn't seem so long ago, in my mind!
To care for your attachments, use a few drops of machine oil and a soft cloth to wipe them down. A little furniture polish on the wood of the box....and keep them in a drawer of the sewing machine.
If you are really in to identifying the function of each item (which I hope you do), label them so your descendants don't have a mystery on their hands!
These old machines only did a straight stitch, not zig-zag, so button holes were hand-stitched. That was another skill the seamstress had to learn! I think the ones done by hand with a needle and coarse thread were called "bound buttonholes".
But there was another button hole technique that could be done with the machine. I learned to make them but if you messed it up, you ruined the garment! It was called a "set-in button hole", I think. It was done with only straight stitching. It required some practice to get the technique just right so the button hole open was a straight slit; if you messed it up and the button hole gaped open in the middle, that was called a "pig's eye" button hole which required carefully picking out your stitchs, realigning the fabric edges and trying again for perfection.