A Princess!

I got a new machine come in on Thursday! It is very heavy and one of the Japanese zig zag machines. This one goes under the name 'Princess' and is a pretty two tone brown. It was supposed to be in working order so I was rather looking forward to playing with it. The only complication was, I hadn't been playing with it five minutes when the zig-zag knob dropped off in my hand! I figured the screw just needed tightening so I replaced the knob and put the machine away until Saturday.

 Saturday morning was lovely, we had rain and a thunderstorm and going to work was lovely!

 Anyhow, back to the Princess. She was moderately dirty under the feed and around the race but not excessively so. I gave every moving part a good lubrication and then set about investigating the knob situation. Basically it was as I thought, the screw needed tightening to keep it on the shaft. However when I came to adjust the stitch length I discovered that the stitch length knob had suffered a similar fate. Once these were all tightened though she was ready to go.

underneath

under the cover on top

under the side-door

So know for the picture of the actual machine.

It has a big plastic cover, which isn't cracked, unusually.

Unfortunately the image of the width lever has dropped off, although that doesn't affect function, obviously!

When sewing it has a very quiet and smooth action, I really like it!  The zig-zag width is adjusted by moving the lever, which is spring loaded and then tightening the knob to the right of the lever.  If you don't tighten the knob, creating patterns by moving the width lever is very easy.  It makes a fairly decent stitch too.  I suspect it would be nicer if I spent more time playing with the tension but I'm not about to do that!  It did stitch through two layers of fleece without a pause or skipped stitch though.

from the right side

from the wrong side

I wish I could justify owning this machine......but I really don't need it!

The Frog Princess

I have had technical issues, the memory card that was in my camera won't allow me to load images to the computer, thus I have lost 40+ images, many of which I intended to post here!  Anyhow, a friend has been moving house and I got a new machine from it!  If I can get it to safely operate I'll sell it otherwise it's mine.  It's called a 'Princess' and has seen better days, the pedal (not shown in the below images, sorry) has been dropped I suspect, a LOT, it's very broken and damaged, electrocution hazard.  The plug to plug into the pedal looks like a dog has chewed it and it is basically a lot of exposed wires, another electrocution hazard!  Hopefully the motor will actually work and I can deal with the plug by taking one from another machine, the pedal I'm not so sure.  Spare pedals are almost impossible to come by.  Ok, would you like to see some pictures?

 

Lovely looking machine, it's a Japanese made, zig-zag, feed-dog drop, highshank foot model.  There must be thousands of machines like this around, all going under different fancy names, the other two I've come across being the Sterling and the Myer-Victor, both machines were fabulous.

In other news, courtesy of the friend who gave me the machine above, I have a canary.  He's lovely but I'm rather hoping that my friend B will have him.  He hasn't got a name yet, there's been quite a few suggestions from helpful family members though, Gilbert, Enrico, Bjorn, Puffball, Frangipani, Freddie, Shirley, Elton, poor bird, whatever he is named he will reflect someone's musical taste I suspect!  Perhaps we could just call him 'Canary'?

There is a story to be told about the Fashion Mate posted earlier on but some of the photos were on that memory card so it'll have to wait till I've taken a few more.