Found In The Loft

Before I went into hospital Tom and I started sorting out our loft. There is so much stuff in there we were starting to fear for our safety at night! I had visions of the ceiling giving way under the weight and us all being crushed to death in our beds. Years of "put it in the loft" when we don't know what to do with something was starting to catch up with us. After a few weeks it was starting to look much better and while we are not getting rid of very much it is all neatly stacked in easily accessable boxes. At the back of the loft we found a box that was not ours the contents covered in old paper. Tom was all for just chucking it out but I brought it down and carefully looked through it. To my delight it was full of off cuts of fabric from Liberty of London. In with the fabrics were two really retro looking handmade shirts. "It looks like something Sam Tyler would wear in Life On Mars!" said our youngest son looking at the long sleeved one. I was so pleased, the tops fit me (just) and all this fabric I can make pretty scarves from has come just at a time when my poor neck needs hiding for a while. They were heaven sent!

  Now I'm feeling much better I thought I would start to think about making the scarves and hemming the edges. In the late 1980s when we first started to go to car boot sales I bought a lovely old Singer sewing machine for £1. I had intended to fix it up but without the internet in those days I couldn't find the replacement parts for it and no one knew how to thread the old fashioned bobbin so I gave up and put it in the loft. We have dragged it around with us through two house moves and it has gone in the loft each time with much complaining from Tom as he struggles with it up the ladder.

  So today down it came (more complaining) and I have studied it for the first time in 30 years. It has a serial number on and you can date singer sewing machines from this number. Incredibly this machine dates to 1897. My grandmother was a seamstress as a young woman in the 1890s, I wonder if she used a sewing machine just like this.

     There are videos on youtube with instructions of how to thread these old bobbins and parts seem to be available on ebay. So now in a world with the internet, this machine seems no longer unusable. I owe it to the Victorian lady who sat and sewed with it to try and get it working again. Then when it is fixed I can hem my new scarves. Today seems to have been a very successful day.