Sewing Machine Archaeology {Novumber #1}

Blogtoberfest was not just a fantastic way to connect with new people and ideas, but also a really good sandpit for my blogging skills.  I even wonder if my sewing is improving by osmosis from all that creativity out there! if  only


I don’t know if I’ll keep posting every day, but I am going to try and follow my own single-portion-fest of focused, bread-and-butter technical skill improvement, hence, Novum-ber!

Novumber is all about:

- experimenting with Damiel’s attachments

–  hacking gliding through fabric along a straight edge – hopefully massively increasing chance of me actually cutting a whole quilt in less than 3 months!

- sewing in a perfectly straight line while remembering to have enough thread in the full bobbin

… and other such grown up things to be listed another day…

 Okay – So let’s start with this little lot!

I can’t work out what these bits and bobs that came with Damiel are for … So, I went to the very friendly ladies at the Brighton Sewing Centre and spilled them out on a cutting mat for identification – it was like trying to identify some long extinct beast from its tail bone!

As you’ll see, some pieces must have belonged to some other mythical sewing machine dinosaur, as Damiel is, of course, debonair and tall of shank.  I love how we keep and group things that don’t actually work, but look like they should!

from left to right (you’ll be impressed by my technical language here)

• foldy and sewy thing for binding
  
• general foot (doesn’t fit)
  
• lifesaving 1/4 to 1/2 inch guide
  
• very complicated needle threader
  
• 2 extension pieces (don’t fit)
  
• straight stitch foot (doesn’t fit)
  
• extension piece for guide
  
• extension piece for guide
  
• zigzag foot (doesn’t fit)
  
• another fabric guidey thing
  
• zipper foot (does fit!)
  
• button foot – like I’m going to use that given my cack-handedness

So, thank you, lovely Brighton Sewing Centre ladies – at least I know what won’t work now, so I can stop trying to force them on like one of the ugly step-sisters!



Do you have a sewing machine ‘bone’ you need to identify?  Why not upload a picture to my new archaeology of sewing machines flickr group and see if anyone can help?