Thursday 4 June 2015

Resources

Hopefully this should be a Sticky Post at the top of the blog, if it's worked. :)

This post is a Work In Progress, and as I go along I'm hoping to add resources, helpful sites, and anything on the internet that I've found useful, whether it's to do with the Singer machine, or with sewing itself.

*Please Note* If you see a link to your site here and you're not happy with that, please let me know and I'll remove it. Likewise, if there is a really helpful site I've missed, let me know and I'll take a look. I'm here to learn, after all.


Singer 28k Sewing Machines
Online pdf of the manual for Singer 27 and 28 machines is here, on Singer's website.
I've found this really useful for threading the machine, and working out which part does what.

The list of serial numbers are also on Singer's site here

However, for working out what my machine was and how old it was, this wonderful blog was the best place. I learned my Singer's type, age and location of manufacture in minutes; such a great post.

On Youtube, I found Lizzie Lenard's channel invaluable. Lots of information about how to thread the machine, wind the bobbin, and lots of more advanced videos that I'll watch as I learn. She has a great way of describing things simply and clearly, too.

That's all I have for sites that are specific to my machine, at the moment. I've seen sites for treadle sewing machines, and for vintage (mostly electric) machines that aren't quite antique yet, but not much for hand-crank machines. For anyone like me who didn't know the distinction, by the way, something becomes antique when it is over 100 years old (according to Google, anyway). Hopefully I'll come across some more specific sites as I keep searching.

Sewing
At the moment, I'm at the stage of just slowly collecting links and finding inspirational pictures on Pinterest, so when I find the right sites, I'll add them here. It's early days yet.

The best place for ideas and beginner projects so far has been The Hobbycraft Blog. So many ideas and inspirational tutorials here.

This beginner tutorial on youtube was great for my first lines of sewing, it's a nice set of practice pieces and it helped me to get used to how the machine works and what I can do with it.