Fear Factor

After reading Peter's post yesterday, I was finally shamed into inspired to reconsider my vintage machine, the Singer 185J, made in 1959 and gifted to me by my MIL. Here's an awesome vintage commercial produced by Singer to tell you about how fab it is.

For starters, I've done some research on this machine and I can tell you a few things about it:

• It was Canadian-made in St.-Jean-sur-Richlieu (QC) NOT St. John's (NL) as many people have mistakenly supposed. Back then, mon Dieu, the suburb of Mtl. was known by its English name. Kind of contextualizes the October Crisis...

• It came with a piece of paper sporting my MIL's measurements in 1959 (before she had kids): Bust 35.5, Waist 25, Hips 35. OMG. Note: She is widely regarded to have been a mega-hottie.

• It's a 3/4 sized, mint-green machine and has (essentially) the same guts as the ubiquitous, early-era Singer 99, which was produced for more than 40 years. The 185J was the "modern" version.

• It was made in "St. John's" and in Scotland. The British version was called 185K and it was a suspect shade of beige.
  

• Mine came with a Singer Buttonholer kit, the likes of which are readily available.

• It's widely regarded to be an excellent machine - if underrated - with a strong motor (.75 amp) and a cast iron chassis. It can sew through leather and even plastic. I've seen well-preserved versions online for up to 400 bucks (and heard about those purchased for 20 bucks at thrift stores).

• It's a "portable" model. Um, yeah. It weighs 33 pounds.
  

My green genie gift is not in cosmetic mint condition (pun intended) - my MIL must have worked the shit out of it, what with all the missing enamel - but it runs perfectly, especially since my husband helped me to refurbish it last year. I haven't used it much, though, cuz (honestly) I've been afraid of it. This thing is seriously hard-core. And I never used the buttonholer cuz I'm tremendously freaked out by a) wacky vintage gizmos and b) button holes. You can see my problem.

Today, though, I was so sick of being sick - and so intrigued to figure this out - that I harassed my husband into helping me set it up. It's quite a production to install the buttonholer:

You have to install that face plate on top of the regular machine plate (note the screw at foreground of photo).

You choose the stitch width with that mechanism on the side of the main piece (the beige thing at the back). The cloth clamp (the thing with the grooves) needs to be at the front-most position.

Egad, see the nicks and dings on this machine?! Sadly they're everywhere.

At some point my MIL lost the thread spool pin so she simply put a nail in the slot?! What can I say, my husband's people are practical. Totally doesn't work using a modern thread spool, which is why I've got a bobbin where the thread should go. Last night I found a plastic replacement on Amazon and bought it. Of course, the vendor won't ship to Canada so I've had to send it to my mother.

Finally, here are the buttonholes it made expertly. I used no interfacing, fyi. I was too lazy.

Ok, this is a reasonably thin wool blend (the culottes fabric), but I was still impressed at the perfect buttonholes this thing turned out first time around... These are my very first 2 attempts and they use different sized templates.

But the piece de resistance is most definitely this:

These holes go through 2 layers of medium weight denim with no stabilizing interfacing. I didn't even press the fold! I've opened the top button and the bottom one is still closed. These are the WRONG SIDE of the buttons, people.

Sometimes vintage really knows how to get it right. The buttonholer moves the fabric, not the needle. Seems like it wouldn't work as well as a modern (needle-moving) machine, but it's 100% more reliable.

I may actually have to make something with buttons now.