Singer Sewing Machine 201K Refurbishment & Service

Hello

Bronia from the sewing group said that she had her Aunt's vintage sewing machine and showed me a picture.  Ooo err, the later 201K so very desirable.  I volunteered to have a look at it and see if it worked.  Unfortunately, she hadn't found the electric leads with it so we put mine on it.  It worked, yeah!

She thinks it was last used in the 1970's, and had been stored in the loft ever since.

This is what 40 odd years of dust looks like.  Why is that old sewing machine cases always have a paint spill on them?

This is the later 201K which is made of Aluminium so much lighter to carry than the original cast iron one, this one dates from 1955.

Don't think that it has ever been cleaned out with a lint brush.  The paintwork had a layer of grime over it which took some getting off.

Here is the finished product, cleaned, polished and oiled.

Really pleased how its has come up.  I had to take the tension disks apart to clean and reset them to get it to stitch correctly.

All tucked up ready to go home.

Gave the case a clean and polish

The paint spill was there to stay so I coloured it in with a brown furniture pen that you use on scratches.

Look whats moved in my garden!  Its parents have been bouncing around for a couple of weeks, there are 5 of these cheeky chappies, my garden is going to get eaten.  Pity Buzz is too old to chase them out of the garden.

Cheers

Sharon

Machine Quilting on Singer 201K

Hello

The lovely Anita asked me to finish off a quilt top she had.  It's an Amish inspired quilt that she had made along with her friends from across the globe.  Ladies from Germany, New Zealand, Australia and USA had made some of the blocks.

Seeing it was a large quilt, Mavis the Singer 201K was deployed again as she is the one in the built in table.  The quilt was far too large for the Featherweights.

I refurbished this table, it was in quite a state when I got it.  So stripped it down and used Danish oil to revive it.

I was just thinking the other day that I hadn't got a good shiny sheen on it. Then realised that it was the last thing that I needed was a slippy surface for the quilts to slide off.

It was tricky to do as it had to sit on the machine table at odd angles, the fabric and machine both wanted to run straight so lots of fabric wrestling.

The names of Anita's friends were written on some of the blocks so prior to quilting, I embroidered them on with vintage thread.  I marked the quilting lines with tailors chalk.

 I used a micro tack gun to secure the layers together, which are great until you have to snip them off the finished quilt, they ping all over.

Ta daa

 Mavis, the Singer had a good service on completion of the quilt, I have decided that I will keep her in the house instead of the summerhouse as a reward.  Lizzie made me feel guilty for not using her.

Cheers

Sharon

Dear Jane Quilt Book

Hello

I have had a lot of time off work, the gardens are sopping wet which is starting to get to me, its frustrating when you can't get to work.  Decided that I needed a challenge so got my Dear Jane Quilt book out.  Again!

This book has been in a cupboard for a couple of years, I was full of enthusiasm when I first got it until I actually looked at the patterns! Tried doing a couple of the blocks using English paper piecing, one worked the other didn't so the book was put away until I improved my quilting skills with a couple of new to me techniques,  Foundation and Applique.  

This March my sister bought me a lovely charm pack of Moda fabrics called "Farmhouse Reds" for my birthday so I put them to good use and out came the book.  Also using another Moda charm pack called "Lizzie's Legacy".

This little case keeps the fabrics together and out of the sun (that is if it comes back).

I am picking at the patterns doing the easy Applique ones first along with a couple of the easier foundation ones.

As you can see its rained a lot in North Yorkshire!

Really enjoying making these, 34 down, 191 to go.

The Author has a super website you can find find it here http://www.dearjane.com/

Cheers

Sharon

PS using my Singer 221K Featherweight for this "little" job, it sews perfectly straight so the blocks are accurate and goes really slow when I want it to, perfect for sewing the curves when making the applique shapes which are then handsewn onto the 5"blocks.