Thursday, August 6, 2015

Naughty Girl

I've been a naughty quilter the past couple of days. I ordered some fabric while on no-buy. I did keep it to two pieces. One fabric is for table runners for one of my "adopted" daughter's weddings, so that hardly counts in my book. I bought enough fabric to make the runners, and that's it.

The other fabric I bought was for a backing for the pineapple quilt. I had planned on piecing a backing from stash, but honestly, I really want this quilt done, so getting it out of here was more important than saving the money. Wide quilt backing wasn't wide enough, so I ended up buying yardage, but still only two seams on the back of the quilt. I can deal with that. Connecting Threads had some fabric on clearance for $3.56 a yard, so not too bad for a backing, even if I did buy twelve yards of it! I figure I needed 11 yards, but I ordered an extra yard to be safe. At that price, I'd rather be safe than sorry.

...And the other naughty thing I did... well, I'll give you a hint.

  Here's another hint
Wiring is shot and spliced in several places. Light is broken. It has a motor boss. $30. It's perfect!

Yup, I bought another sewing machine, a Singer 66 red eye, that I plan to convert to a handcrank. I had been looking for a Singer 99 handcrank, but this will do nicely. I really just wanted a round bobbin handcrank that took regular needles. My Singer 12 handcrank is a long bobbin, and I can get more bobbins, but not any more needles, since they are no longer being made. This machine I have everything for, aside from the part to turn it into a handcrank. I will order that tonight after I blog. Since this machine already has a spoked wheel, I only need to order one part and a screw, for a total of less than $20. A round bobbin handcrank for under $50! All the original handcranks I have been looking at are going for at least $250 after shipping costs are added, but $50 is more my speed.

I haven't had time to clean the machine up yet, it just came home with me a couple hours ago. Everything moves easily, and even under the machine looks clean, so no problems there.

I tried to look up the manufacture date, but it is a C series machine, and all the records were lost for those. I did gain a history lesson while researching for the date though. C series machines were made in Wittenberge, Prussia. They started production in either 1904 or 1908, depending on which source you believe. During WW2 the factory was mostly being used for war items, and after the war, the factory ended up in an area of Germany under Russian control. The entire factory was stripped and everything taken back to Russia as war reparations. The number after the C is high, so I'm guessing 1930's sometime. The scroll plate is lovely, I should have taken a pic of it.

Now, hopefully, I'll be good for a while and not gain any new acquisitions for a while. You never know though, when the vintage machine bug bites, and you see a lovely machine for $20 or so, they are hard to pass up. I did see a great Singer 301 shortbed in the original trapezoid case for $70, which is a great price. I was good and left it though. It was tempting, I love 301's, they are just great machines.



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