Sewing

A stay-stitch looks just like any straight stitch, it's used on curved areas of garment patterns.

I have a 1938 electric singer sewing machine with cabinet and seat with most of the attachments and bobbins. What is my machine worth please.

Hello please answer this question thank you :)

Neckties can be made from most any fabric; however, the best looking ties are usually made from silk. Polyester fabrics are most commonly used for neckties, and the prices of the neckties sometimes reveal the quality of the fabric.

A silk necktie may cost upwards of US$200 while a polyester tie can cost as little as US$10.

Synthetic fabric means that it was man-made with chemicals - it's a fabric that is NOT natural. Examples are polyester, acrylic, rayon, spandex, and nylon. Woven fabric just means the fabric was produced by weaving the threads together (as opposed to knit fabric, where the threads are interlooped, allowing for stretch). Synthetic fabric can be woven or knit.

Thomas Saint is the first person to create a sewing machine.

It takes a little practice to get good at sewing with knit fabrics, but the results are worth it. Find a simple t-shirt pattern--the common pattern manufacturers make them. 100% cotton interlock knit is the most comfortable, but a knit with some polyester in it is OK too, just not as comfortable and cool.

When sewing, you will need to use a stretch stitch or, if your machine doesn't have one, you will need to use a small zig-zag stitch. This way, when your shirt is stretched, the thread won't break. On certain seams, particularly ones that go with the grain of the fabric like the hem around the bottom, you will need to stabilize the fabric along the line that you are going to stitch. You can buy iron-on, tear away stabilizer at a fabric store. You will iron a strip of it all the way around the hem (or wherever), stitch the hem, then tear away the stabilizer, being careful not to rip the stitches. This will help keep the fabric from stretching when you sew, eliminating the wavy, stretched out look that some home-made knit garments have.

Making your own t-shirts can be rewarding, but I find it much easier and cheaper just to buy one.

If the machine is in excellent working order, comes with all its attachments and an instruction manual then you could expect to get anywhere from $5 to $50 for your machine. There is not much demand for sewing machines in general these days. Very few people sew.

Everything in the U.S. is now made dirt cheap in China or hadn't you heard.

Good Bye Sweet America.

Might get a better deal selling your sewing machine for scrap metal.

I hopes this helps.

There are many different ways to color fabric. The most common way is to soak it in a dye. The dye you use can be a commercial product, or a homemade dye made by boiling water with a color soluable item, such as berries. There are many excellent websites you can find by typing "homemade dyes" in your search box, if you need more info. Another way of coloring fabric is to paint it. Most people use a commercial fabric paint, but you can use any kind of paint you want, crayons or even marking pens. Yet another, more complicated way, is to sew or glue thread onto the fabric. This is usually done in the form of embroidery or needlepoint. Again, there are many fine websites to give you instructions on the techniques.

Free-Westinghouse manufactured a line of electro-mechanical sewing machines, Generally these were housed in a wooden cabinet which folded open revealing the sewing machine inside.

For someone who maintains nostalgic memories of their Mother making or mending cloths on this or a machine like it, the machine is priceless but as far as selling it as a practical sewing machine, the machine has a resale value of zero ($0.00).

There is nothing wrong with this particular make or model. Ninety-nine percent of these older, electro-mechanical sewing machines aren't worth anything because the cost of having it serviced approaches or exceeds the price of a NEW machine from a discount store. A new $89 machine will do everything the old one does and more.

An old machine that has been stored away for years always requires service, even though it appears to sew ok for a quick test. All the grease and oil which lubricated the machine has either hardened or turned to varnish. This gunk has to be cleaned out and the machine lubricated else the machine will jam and break threads on the first project. Also the "all metal" machine has little plastic gears and a rubber timing belt, both of which have become fragile with age.

Although older machines might be constructed from mostly metal, this alone doesn't make them "better" than a new machine having a lot of plastic parts. They are more costly to maintain and repair, due to specialized knowledge required. However, they do typically have more torque, so they can sew denser materials than the lower end new machines with plastic drive pieces. So the main use of these older machines is for frugal sewers wishing to work with heavier knit fabrics, costume fabrics including synthetic fur, and multiple fold fabrics such as those created when sewing fabric tents for historic reenactments.

You are unlikely to break a new machine but if you do then you can take it back. Breaking an old machine will lead you down a more expensive repair path unless you are into repairing things yourself.

There is not any real market for machines of this era except for their use by those lacking funds to buy a newer machine and those doing unusual tasks requiring more force from the needle. If all else fails, metal recyclers may give you some money for the cast iron in the body of the machine.

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Jeans are constructed with several seaming techniques but the seam you are probably inquiring about is the "flat-fell" seam. Sewmetheway

I don't know when Issac Singer began experimenting with sewing machines but the official starting year of the company was 1851. I believe that is when they brought out the Model 1. I have an old American Heritage magazine(book) from 1951 that has an ariticle about the 100th anniversary of the company

If your serial number starts with a 385 or 158 prefix, check at managemyhome.com. If it's 148 or 117, you are probably out of luck as far as free goes and will need to check with second market sellers. One of these is sewusa.com and you will sometimes find manuals at ebay.

First you take some sort of thread, whether it be wool, silk, cotton, or nylon (acrylic), then you weave it.

In weaving, you stretch a bunch of threads up and down, (they are called warp threads) Then you take another piece of thread and weave it under and over the warp threads and you end up with fabric.

You can make a small piece of fabric yourself. See the link I have provided.

The yarns of a fabric that stand up or out from the weave. As in carpet, velvet or flannel

It is hard to put a true date on when the loom or weaving machine was invented.

There is evidence of cloth being made in Mesopotamia and in Turkey as far back as 7000 to 8000. Wool was accessible in Egypt, as well, but was considered a fiber of the lower classes, namely, herdsmen and farmers. Cloth made from wool was thought to be crude and irreverent. Fabric made with cotton was much more acceptable and has been found in Egyptian tombs.

The earliest power loom was probably invented by Edmund Cartwright in 1785.

Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a mechanical loom in 1801, that was programmed with punched cards to weave complex patterns.

Successful power looms were in operation in England by the early 1800s, to improve on American output Francis Cabot Lowell spied on the new British textile industry. The British drawings or a model of a power loom, so he memorized the workings of British power looms.

With Paul Moody he recreated and develop an adaptation of the British design.

Early machines used the pedal as power. Th operator would pedal in order to make the machine sew. In modern machines in control the sewing action by stopping and starting and controlling the rate.

Embroidery can be dated back to 30,000 BC. (in an archaeological find, fossilized remains of heavily hand-stitched and decorated clothing were found). Chinese thread embroidery dates back to 3500 B.C.

The earliest machine embroidery was a combination of machine looms and hand embroidery (done by teams of women) in France in the mid-1800s.

They are coated with a type of fatty acid which when it becomes wet, causes it to dissolve. Since the tissues are moist, the fatty acid makes the suture dissolve.

A sewing 'kit' maybe...:)

Madras Patchwork fabric is fabric made of patches of Madras plaid fabric. Madras plaid fabric is pure cotton fabric woven in the city of Madras,India, and is known for its bleeding qualities and softness making it ideal wear for summers. The patchwork madras fabric is patch-work stitching formed into a fabric,where the 'base' fabric is madras plaid cottons. More on how it is made: 1. The base fabrics need to be chosen/woven first.These can be ready fabrics in different Madras check patterns/colors. 2.Once the base fabrics are in hand, the designers make color-combinations of 3,4,6 or even 15 checks/plaids in different colors, in order to give the completed fabric its signature pattern. 3.After the color/check patterns are chosen,its time to cut the individual fabrics into strips according to the size of checks required.Most patchwork madras fabric is available in 3x3 inch checks.Which means that the fabric is cut into 3 inch width strips along the entire length of the fabric. 4.These strips (assuming 3 inches in width and of the length equal to the entire length of the fabric in yards) are then loaded on to motorised sewing machines operated by women workers of India,who are untrained masters of sewing despite never having read a book on sewing or crafts,or even ever having seen a sewing pattern. Once loaded on to the machines, these fabric strips are then stiched onto the other fabric strips of different colors/patterns chosen to make the entire design pattern originally decided upon by the fabric designer. Regardless of the stitching method used,the fabric looks almost the same on the front & back of the fabric. It is fabric that is made of small squares of plaid fabric that are sewn together to make one larger piece of fabric. This site shows a pic of some shorts made from patchwork madras fabric: http://www.amazon.com/Izod-Patchwork-Madras-Plaid-Shorts/dp/B000P8AK3E

because when there is less area pressure increases and when there is more area pressure decreases

I am going to offer my somewhat educated opinion on this ... for my "credentials" I will just say that I have owned both a baby lock serger and a brother serger and I work in the "sewing industry" on a national level so I have used a lot of different types of machines and can compare them for similarities and differences by using them.

My opinion is that the two are not "related". For one thing the two sergers have never struck me as similar when using them. I never once thought that they might be made by the same manufacturer whereas I do think that about my Brother serger and another high end serger that has a totally different name on it. I suspect that this is the kind of information that is available to the public if they choose to dig a little bit. I don't really care about it ... if the machine is a nice machine then it's a nice machine! It can be nice to know that your $200 machine is made by a company that makes $1000 machines as well ... but it could also lead you to believe that you have the inferior machine. I don't think that inexpensive necessarily means inferior. I have been very happy with my Brother machines, both sergers and sewing machines. A skilled seamstress can do just as beautiful work with an old straight stitch Singer as she can on a 2007 top o'the line machine! That too is my educated opinion! Hope it helps.

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I would like to add that while Brother and BabyLock sergers don't seem to match up, their sewing machines are IDENTICAL!

It's kind of like Riccar and Simplicty with their vacuums. Some of their models match up piece by piece and others are very similar but look completely different.