Couturette

I give up!

Even though David Coffin is singing the praises of the hemming foot – I have not really mastered the technique up to now. My first trial was a complete disaster.

I was a good girl and made several yards of trial seams on a piece of cotton. The result was acceptable so I ventured on to the real garment.

What I hadn’t considered: the blouse I wanted to hem is cut on the bias and my trial fabric was – of course – cut on the straight grain. I never would have guessed that the grainline made such a difference with the hemming foot. The cut edge was constantly sliding out of the foot, I got puckers, crumples and whatnots.

This is how it looked with the hemming foot:

No good! I cut off the hem and made a new one the traditional way: fold – iron – fold again – iron again and finally edgestitch the hem.

According to Coffin hems look “homemade” and unprofessional when not made with the hemming foot. I opt to disagree. In my opinion the above hem looks professional enough.

Conclusion: I am not giving up completely on the hemming foot, it will get a second chance on a shirt that is cut on the straight grain, but I think it is not absolutely necessary to use it to produce good looking narrow hems.

Hooray, my little Singer Featherweight is purring again.  My beloved Prince Charming fixed it over the holidays and I’ve been sewing with it for an entire week now and it’s been pure fun.

The Featherweight is a straightstitch machine and has only a round hole in the throatplate, not a large slit as the combination machines.

Featherweight:

Toyota

The fabric cannot be pulled down into the throatplate and is transported better by the feed dogs.

Therefore the Featherweight can make do with a much smaller presser foot.  The standard presser foot is tiny and narrow compared to the standard foot of my modern combination machines, you can see the needle position very precisely and it also wonderful for edgestitching.

In direct comparison you can see how much smaller the Featherweight presser foot is and the free view to the needle

On top of that it’s just plain fun to sew on a machine which is older than myself and in such good condition. I seriously doubt that any of our modern plastic encased high-tech sewing machines will be in such good shape in 60 or 70 years.