March/April 1975
By the Mother Earth News editors
Standing in front of the living room window in my friend Ann's apartment is a rectangular piece of old woodwork. One side of its front contains a bank of drawers (with ornamental pulls that have mostly been knocked off in the course of long use). The four doors in its center, however, retain their carved faces untouched, as does the long panel on the side opposite the drawer bank. The device's plain wooden top is surmounted by a second lid located approximately in the center.
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An antique cabinet, possibly? Well, yes in a way. The object is an old Singer pedal sewing machine, with the sewing head let down and hidden behind the center panels. Lift the second top and you trigger a powerful spring that pops the mechanism up like a jack-in-the-box. The central doors-when swung into the cabinet and under the machine-help to support the works and at the same time reveal the grille-design pedal. The drawers contain supplies, and the long door on the other side hides the pulley which converts the pumping of the treadle into movement of the machine's parts.
Operating the sewing machine is simplicity itself. Just start it by spinning the flywheel mounted on its right side in the direction you want to stitch: toward yourself for forward stitches and away for backstitches. At the same time, begin to work the pedal up and down with your feet. The faster you pump, the faster the mechanism runs. Stop pedaling to stop sewing.
The treadle machine has power enough to operate the modern buttonholer attachment put out by Singer, and today's needles and presser feet fit it with no problem. In fact, if you buy one of the old-timers it may come-as Ann's did-with an assortment of accessories for use in hemming, ruffling, edging, and darning, along with the more common zipper foot. You may even be lucky enough to get an instruction manual that tells you how to use all these strange-looking gadgets and, more important, how to maintain the machine.
What to do about maintenance if you don't have a manual You could, first of all, go to your local Singer dealer for art vice. If he has on hand a reconditioned or converted (to electric power) model similar to yours, he may be able to demonstrate how and where to oil it.
