This is a youtube video of a great older show that explains (in a non-snoozy way) the mechanics and the history of sewing machines. It’s delightfully quirky and full of cartoons and interesting factoids.
Author: Amanda Wynn
nerd. book lover. coffee addict.
Necchi BU restoration.
Today, this came, in all its musty, dusty, crusty glory.
A Necchi BU in who-knows-what-kind-of-condition, via Ebay. Oh, Ebay, you minx. I was given no promises that it ran; I was warned it “could use a new cord,” which in Ebay sewing machine sales speak usually means certain death if you plug in the current one. I knew what I was getting into. I welcomed it, even, because there is a weird brain buzzy joy I get from taking something that is a mess and watching my tinkering transform it into something smoothly functioning. It’s a compulsion now.
So I pulled it out of the box and surveyed the damage. There was so much crud inside of it that I didn’t even try to run it until I cleaned out everything I could reach with makeup brushes and old toothbrushes. I oiled the BEJEEZUS out of it. The handwheel/balance wheel turned very freely but did not move the needle up and down except a tiny bit at random so I thought something important was broken that was out of my league to fix. But I’m stubborn, and a little demented, so I oiled it and oiled it and it improved slightly but was still impossible to run. It was still too bound up.
My kitty supervised.
Then, with maniacal abandon, decide to bust out the WD40. I removed everything electrical, which for this model, meant unscrewing three screws (motor mount and light/back access panel screws). Having read that some people submerge frozen up machine heads in kerosene to loosen them up, I went hog wild with the WD40 (though I got smart and put a puppy pad beneath the machine to save myself a big mess). To my wonderment, it worked!
So a ton of WD40 and about a quarter of a bottle of sewing machine oil later, I have a functional Necchi BU! I also replaced a bobbin tire and the v-belt, which I feel like I should get a Boyscout badge for doing successfully.
Behold, this glorious wedding of form and function. Bask in the glorious design lines.
Necchi Love
I have a new sewing machine in my life, which I’ve only just oiled and begun to learn. It’s a Necchi Esperia that my grandma found at a resale shop and hurried me in to see. As if either of us actually thought I’d get out of there empty handed! My grandma has quite the eye–she just surprised me with a Pfaff 130 a few weeks ago. She’s amazing. She’s also the person who taught me how to sew my first wild drunken looking seam on her Touch and Sew. She has a way of being able to thread vintage machines by feel when I’ve been staring at the thread diagram for five minutes and still can’t get it right. Did I mention she’s amazing?
I was trying to limit my obsessing to slant shank Singers, but after the Pfaff and the Necchi, it’s all over. I want every metal bodied Necchi I see. The 50s design period of sewing machines (and patterns and just about every other damn thing in manufacture) seem to be my favorite design era of all the major sewing manufacturers. What can I say? I’m a mid century modern girl.
I had no idea Sophia Loren was the Necchi spokesmodel for a time, either, but somehow, it makes me want to shove my A-cups in a pushup bra and little black dress and sew it up in proper glam fashion.
So the Esperia is a straight stitch only machine. It’s a simple bodied, olive colored machine, and so far it seems to be in really good condition. It was in a cabinet and seems to have been cared for well. I read that the Necchis, due to the tight fit of the well designed, quiet running parts, need more oil than many other machines. Fine by me. The smell of sewing machine oil gives me a deep seated sensory satisfaction that borders on perverse. I had to shake my head and laugh at the manual–it is a snapshot of the cultural prejudices of the time. It congratulates the Madam on her recent purchase and advises her not to use olive oil on her new machine (!) because it gums up the parts. I can imagine that line being spoken condescendingly by some sleazy salesman on Mad Men.
It seems that finding supplementary material for this particular machine, or any Necchi, for that matter, is more difficult than information on some of the Singers I’ve been dragging home. But I found a link that has a few manuals and other ephemera here. (Bless you, sir or madam, for sharing!) There are free pdfs of a BU Mira and BU Nova manual, as well as a service manual.
This isn’t mine (borrowed from an ebay listing) but looks like the very same model. Mine came with Greist parts and a buttonholer, which is a bit confusing. I would assume they’re not original, but who knows–I’ve seen listings for Greist accessories labeled Necchi/Elna Sewing Circle, so maybe there was some collaborating I’m not aware of.
weekend project: forward shoulder adjustment + singer tune up
The last few shirts and suitjackets I’ve made muslins of have been decidedly underwhelming in regard to fit. I’ve never made any shirt that felt truly comfortable, and they always seem less flattering than what I’ve had in mind, at least in the shoulder and back armhole area.
I tried a broad shoulder adjustment which resulted in shoulders that hung off my body in such a way that my actual shoulders were not inside the sleeve shoulder and could not move.
I have tried a sloping shoulder adjustment, which definitely did not work.
I tried adding width to the back bodice piece center back, thinking my shoulders were broader in the back than typical patterns allow for. That messed up the front fit.
My current fit hypothesis: I need a forward shoulder adjustment for my slumping posture, a way of dealing with my broad/weird back, and an accommodation for my broad rib cage/small bust combo. Oh, and my nonexistent waist may come into play also. Phew!
So I found this extremely helpful blog at A Fashionable Stitch by a woman with a similar shoulder issue in the back. I’m not sure if mine is a large shoulder blade, but our body types sound pretty similar and I used her advice (she explains it in detail, but to summarize badly, add to the back of the sleeve, sort of flattening and expanding the curve of the back part of the sleeve cap, and add a bit of extra width to the back bodice in the same armhole area). Since I also have a somewhat broad rib cage I add about half an inch at the bottom part of the armhole (the point where it meets the trunk) and then taper that down almost to my waistline. And magically, on the muslin I recently tried of this, my arms FIT!
I used advice from many sources on the enigmatic forward shoulder adjustment. Interestingly, this doesn’t exist in any of my vintage sewing books, which makes me wonder if it’s a posture issue that has only recently become common due to lifestyle changes in the last, eh, 30 years like large amounts of computer time, texting time, stooping over screens. But I digress. Essentially what I did for this is lay out the pattern pieces with all the pieces touching where they meet and adjust the line of the shoulder seam on all pieces to angle forward. I am adding to the back and reducing from the front. The pattern shape stays the same but the lines move. The armholes also stay in the same place. More on this later, maybe.
So for the weekend I’m going to try a princess seamed simple blouse with all of these adjustments. I’m sewing with a vintage Singer 348 that I bought because it was “owned and perfectly maintained by a professional seamstress” except that apparently she didn’t know how to clean out her bobbin case. It was the dirtiest machine I’ve ever seen. More on this later, too. Anyway, this is her maiden sewing voyage with me, and I’m trying to get a feel for whether she might need a belt replacement. I can’t tell if the slippiness is something I’m not used to because I don’t usually sew on a belt driven machines, or if (as I suspect) the belt is old and not as effective as it should be due to time.
The first step toward recovery is
Admitting you have an addiction. A sewing machine addiction. Complete and utter obsession.
My office could fuel a fashion house.
*searches ebay again*
I fell in love after using a 301 Singer which moved along smooth as silk and made hardly any sound at all. After sewing for six months on a plastic contemporary Brother, there’s just no comparison. So now any vintage Singer under $100 I see represents a writhing, beckoning temptation. The Slant-o-matics were the top of the line (401, 501) and so of course I’ve added those to my hoard. But now the other models with external motors and belt driven mechanisms are becoming interesting too. Not quite as perfect, but I find myself wanting all of them I can get my hands on to explore the idiosyncracies of each.
Current obsession: 300 series. The differences between the 348, the 337/338 and the 327/328. Add to the temptation that they’re various shades of retro gorgeous robin egg blue and seafoam green and it’s just, ugh.
Did I mention the atomic design and the curves and the space program influence visible in the rocket like detailing? How can I resist this:
The top, brownish one is a 328k, designed with similar touches to the Singer 500 series Rocketeer. The bottom little minx is the 327k with similar style lines but a glorious color scheme that might just crack me before her ebay time runs out. (Color and smell are a big deal to me, since the whole sewing experience is motivated for me by the enjoyment of the feels and sounds as much as they are the vague promise of having something wearable in the end. That doesn’t always work out for me because of fitting challenges > my skill level, so it’s good that I enjoy the journey.) Nevermind that I have 9ish floating around my house currently and haven’t sewn anything since getting sidetracked by the sweet, sweet tactile enjoyment of cleaning them out and oiling them.
I might be addicted to the smell of sewing oil too.
Slant-O-Matic 401 love.
This beauty arrived today. It sews the most consistent, artisanal stitches this sewing noob has ever seen. It’s smooth as butter, even without a servicing, though I will probably take her in for one soon as a courtship gesture in what I’m sure will be a long, intimate relationship between us.
However, having experienced firsthand the wonder of midcentury craftsmanship, I’m afraid my love/hate relationship with ebay will grow only more volatile. I have this dream of fixing up my garage and trying to learn to salvage and fine tune old pieces like this, technohippie that I am, loving both the idea of saving fine work from the landfill and the possibility of doing meaningful work with my hands/elbows/knees covered in grease. Time to start frequenting flea markets again.
What to make to christen her? Something denim with obscene amounts of topstitching, perhaps?
WD40 and Dayquil. What could go wrong?
Battled a headcold AND a sewing machine today. I have a contemporary Singer machine with about 15 stitches and buttonhole function that Santa brought me 8 or so years ago, and which I used at the time to make the world’s shittiest duvet cover. Because I was less than ecstatic about my lackluster abilities it got shoved away somewhere under a stack of books. When I broke it out six months ago, new-again to sewing and more enthusiastic than knowledgeable, I used it until it tightened up, made a horrible squealing noise, and then bound up completely.
Santa had brought me another machine in the interim, because sometimes Santa forgets what he got me years past, but it is a basic Brother with straight stitch and zig zag only, and I live in dread of buttonholes. So I decided to live dangerously and take apart the fancier Singer. Kind of like looking under a car hood. Fear, wonder and puzzlement. Didn’t mess with it much until today, when my weeks of reading about vintage machines and their care made me bust out the WD40, flannel rag and Singer machine oil.
Long story short, I got it to move freely for awhile and thrilled with the sensation of victory, but it’s still not quite right. Put it back together and had three screws left over and a threaded screw-like post that looks as if it’s something important. I was interested to realize its stitch functions are really just built in discs much like the Singer cams of years past.
Was bummed to find that books on sewing machine repair are not very common and more expensive than I can justify when I’m already blowing money on old machines at an alarming rate. I’m fascinated by the mechanics of it all, though. Plastic Singer, you’ve won this round. But I’m gonna be busy, Rocky style, and we’ll rematch soon.
I’m hell bent to learn how to fix up old machines, not least of all because my grandma offered her Touch and Sew, her first major purchase as a married woman, and I have every intention of making that little wonder fully functional again.
Some resources to that end:
TNT Repair website – they have free schematics of a lot of older Singer models as well as helpful information, other resources, etc.
Wefixit Yahoo Group, which is a community of people interested in fixing up older machines.
Open Source Pattern Creation Software: Valentina
Open Source Pattern Creation Software: Valentina
I’m very excited to find this, and will be trying it out soon. Hopefully, eventually, trying to recreate some of Esther Pivnick’s drool worthy vintage patterns described in Fundamentals of Patternmaking, scanned by The Perfect Nose in her infinite generosity toward the sewistsphere. (See her lovely blog for book 1 info and dl link here and book 2 info/link in this post here. Swoon.)
Reading List: May/June 2014
In no particular order:
Virginia Postrel. The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value is Remaking Commerce, Culture and Consciousness.
Lars Svendsen. Fashion: A Philosophy.
Maya Donenfeld. Reinvention: Sewing with Rescued Materials.
David Braeber. Debt: The First 5000 Years.
Sara Ahmed: The Promise of Happiness.
Simon Reynolds. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past
Some of it is heavy, some of it is not so much. All of it is connected in my mind in some way to questions of how the crafted surface of the self matters in the world. How style matters, and to what extent the way we present ourselves socially shapes our identity. The system of signification clothing navigates in a world stratified along lines of power/class/gender/culture. I’m also interested in the social consequences of our ideas about consumption and the way we are led to consume despite them.
To illustrate: I get this idea in my head that I’m going to be a better global citizen consumer and start making my own clothes. I really suck at this so far, so I’m burning through a lot of fabric in the process, and I’m sure that has a social/environmental cost I’m happily pushing out of my head. I’m also deluding myself in seeing this as a pursuit of some minimalistic lifestyle, because fabric.com has become my fantasy closet and even though I want to make my own wardrobe that fits well and is an expression of my creativity, when I finally do get to be okay at it, my current, fully functional clothes are going to probably be waste material or donated (not a perfect social solution either). So as part of my challenge to myself, I want to try to incorporate the fabric from my current wardrobe into my as yet nonexistent super fantastical vintage inspired future wardrobe.
While scouring the internet for vintage patterns, I saw a digitized version of a book that described how to make clothes out of cotton sacks. How to unknit a moth eaten sweater and mend it. It was written during WW2 during the lean years when men were gone and Veronica Lake was modeling how to put one’s hair up for factory work. It’s easy forget the historical context that some of my favorite patterns come from, and what women were able to craft out of so much less than what I possess. That fact is humbling, and inspiring, and circles me back around to questions about what humans really need to be creative, to be happy, and what false ideas of happiness and ownership and necessity and normalcy we are fed via ad images and pop culture in order to keep us hungry for more.
(image credit: Van Gogh sketch from here)
Another day, another sewing fail.
When you wake up with the opening song from To Wong Foo in your head, you know a) you need more Patrick Swayze in your life and b) it may not be a good day, but it will be a *fabulous* one. Bring on the glitter eyeliner.
Alas, my muslin / vomit green sage suiting version of the Hello, Sailor! pants are a bust due to my tree trunk of a waistline and the much dreaded camel toe that the tightness throughout my nether regions resulted in. Sigh. Light colored suiting seems especially prone to this. Next try: going a size bigger and going with my usual natural tendency to do 3/8″ seams rather than forcing myself to do 5/8″ ones. Also, the characteristic bib type opening of the sailor pants as depicted in the pattern does have a certain kind of charm, but my buttonholes still aren’t quite ready to be up front and center in any garment. Saying screw it and doing grommet lace up closures on both sides with a button or two in the waistband on each side at the top. On another go around I want to try expanding on the idea of the bib-ish-thing of the original pattern and instead of having its weird long underwearesque fold down opening, make the whole front half + front waistband of the pants fold down in the same way with buttons along that side edge.
The way I learn is to expose myself to enough instances of the thing I’m trying to grasp that I gradually, subconsciously observe the patterns involved. My current Theory of the Pants Fly Feature is that it has to open up to the widest point of the hip but if it does that, it can open up and reattach almost anywhere along that waistline and fasten in almost any way as long as it’s sturdy. Experimentation to come.
(image borrowed from here: http://imgur.com/gallery/AqnB2)
a word is elegy to what it signifies 