My sewing machine came with drawers full of parts, feet, and attachments, of which I knew how to use none. It is on my List, to figure out if any of them are usable enough. They are a little rusty, and there's a good chance they were original with the machine in 1922.
I don't know how it happenned that I couldn't get anywhere the past months, when it turns out yesterday singerco.com has no only photos of various feet/attachments, but also PDFs of manuals, and, for some, even a video demo!
Out came the Ruffler, or, "that thing with the crab pincher"
I FOUND the instructions, but I'm way too smart and proud to a c t u a l l y make us of a manual, so I saw the picture, eyeballed the position, and ran to fetch mine. It took 3 solid minutes of wiggling, rocking back and forth, and staring blankly before it all made sense (but not before I almost crushed the table, trying to press the entire foot mechanism down with the bottom of needle screw, as opposed to hooking the "pincher thing" OVER the needle screw, which, if you were half way clever, is the ONLY way to get the whole little rig moving to do what it does. Which is, MAKE RUFFLES!
The big screw on top of the Ruffle Rig regulates how deep the ruffle is:
Screwing it tight and to the bottom makes them deepest, letting it far out makes tiny shallow tucks.
My attachment has settings for a pleat every stitch, or a pleat every 5 stitches. In the middle is the "rest" groove, if you need a break from ruffles, and don't want to switch out feet.
I cut into some of my left over cotton from Danish Chairs covers, and then remembered the machine also came with a drawer stocked full of bias tape of all sorts. I picked out the one I'm least likely to use for a sewing project, and experimented with all 3 yards of it.
I am AMAZED that something like this actually DOES something. I mean, it's a couple pieces of steel, few screws, a 'pincher' a 'toothy metal plate', and a 'tiny sprocket' * Not to mention that the whole deal attaches to something powered by my feet or hand only. If all in the world went wrong, and we ran out of sunlight and electricity (these things could happen) I could still make ruffled curtains by the candlelight, all day every day.
This might only be new to me, because I have since found these online, and for newer machines.
Next, it light of this development, is the ruffling of the Green Fluff that is to hang behind my living room curtains. I've been meaning to stitch it and gather the stitching, and stitch again to a ribbon, but this might be easier. I think I have 180 inches of Fluff width, and a 102" window, so I have to figure out what fuffle setting is going to give me a 102/180 ratio.
On my list of Mysterious Attachments now is the Tucker. I found a picture of it, which is how I know what it's called. But it's not the same as the PinTucker on the singer.co site, it's a thingy with a whole mini ruler deal attached to it. I don't know that anything can match the ruffle excitement, but I will try.
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