I am required by the Head of Domestic Commissioning to obtain a new sewing machine, to replace her current Frister + Rossmann 66
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I don't know why we need a new one - it seems to work alright, but I don't understand the first damn thing about them. Usage is general domestic stuff - making curtains & repairing or adjusting clothing.
Anyhoo, apart from a quite general Which review I can't find anything independent on the web, and there doesn't seem to be an active uk sewing newsgroup. I need common-sense recommendations and advice, or else I'm going to get stitched-up (sorry).
Any advice or signposting from current sewists would be appreciated. :o)
My mum's (ex M&S garment technologist) is quite loyal to the Pfaff brand, her oldest machine is a 70s industrial jobbie that dips the household lights slightly in it's inital gulp of power to get started. Full bore speed is scary.
They have a wide range here with specifications that might help in sellecting what type (Pfaff or not) of machine she is after.
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there is Singer, Brother, Toyota, Lidl ... and ye nearest haberdashes store, er, John Lewis?
There's zillions of online groups for sewing - I'll ask my other half for recommendations - but this one seems both active and to have a sub- group for machine recommendations:
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recently bought her a secondhand industrial walking-foot machine (suited to very heavy fabrics).
Looking at product reviews may not be ideal, as it will probably only consider current products - which of course is driven by whatever gets the manufacturer more sales (which currently seems to be lots of microprocessor-controlled fancy-stitching features - most of which I doubt are ever used).
For the same money or less, you may be able to buy a higher-quality, older machine with less features - or even an industrial model, if usage justifies it. Higher-quality machines/brands have excellent manufacturer support - so I wouldn't be nervous of reputable secondhand.
Another approach may be to phone around local sewing machine stores and say "this is the model my wife has now, what would you recommend as a replacement?"
Equally important is a local service centre that supports that manufacturer.
My Dad bought a Pfaff for my Mum, many years ago. It worked well, but the manual was so badly translated, that only Dad or I could do the servicing, as we had to resort to the original German-language manual, and Mum couldn't read German. Simple things like cleaning lint or trapped threads from the shuttle race, required tiny screwdrivers and major dis-assembly. My current machine is a Viking - it performs beautifully, has a well-written manual, and cleaning the shuttle race takes, literally, less than a minute. The Pfaff could take half an hour...and if one of those teeny screws decided to roll off the table, considerably longer!
Sewing machines would get more interest from this group if they had a power-take-off for an Angle Grinder - or a built in Dremel. They are all beautifully made items - a tribute to mass production that evolved earlier in the 1900's. A bit like old typewriters - but they are now obsolete.
I have an old treadle machine, to whose belt I can connect a yarn winder (of similar vintage to the sewing machine)- that sort of counts as a power take-off...
alt.sewing - it has a mixed bunch of sewists, quite a few Americans, a few Brits, one or two Aussies, ditto Germans. Oh and there are quite a few fellows who contribute. Unfortunately it does attract a few trolls who try to upset the ladies with quite gross postings, it's one NG where I do have a fair KF!
I'd echo the cooments others have made about Pfaff. I have a performance
2054 - the current model number is 2058. Be prepared to shop around, I got an excellent deal, but I did have to travel a couple of hundred miles......
Beautifully made and works like a dream. It's not cheap, but the features are worth the money. For tricky work you can get a really slow stitch, sort of down to one stitch per second. You can toggle to have the needle finish up (clear of the material) or down (through the material - useful to stop the material moving when you stop sewing). It also has an auto 'tie-off' which reverse stitches three times then goes forward again three times - saves the seams pulling apart or having to physically tie knots to secure the seams. Oh and many dozens of preprogrammed stitch patterns. The speed control is electronic, not the usual rather coarse variable resistor found on cheaper models.
Ask the question in alt.sewing and everyone, but everyone will say 'Don't try and buy one blind, get the user to go and try out two or three machines, see what she's happy with.'
Depends a bit on what you want it for. For curtains I like my Brother industrial (bought for kitemaking) just because it's so big, both table and under-arm. It takes up a huge space though and can't be put away.
My favourite machine is the Pfaff 1221 / 1222 This is a top-end machine of the late '70s and just about the last of the totally mechanical machines. You can still fix every part of it today, which is the opposite of the electronic Pfaffs of the '80s and beyond. I particularly like it for features like the selectable top feed (great for sewing thin slippery fabrics), auto-stop at the top, auto single- stitch, easy reverse (both button and locking). =A3150-200 from eBay, there are still a few about.
There are similar machines from Bernina and (maybe, but not from my personal experience) Viking.
Japanese domestic stuff is generally poor, although their industrials are good. Industrials are quite good, but only if you have the dedicated space for them. You also lose all features beyond straight sewing, right down to zig-zagging (zig-zag industrials are specialised, high-end and not cheap). What you do get though is a perfect stitch nailed through any fabric, of any number of layers, no matter what. Good for sewing coats in heavy fabrics, or sewing corsetry in multi-layers. You'll want to have an engineer stick a slow pulley in there, as they're a beast to drive at "factory" speeds.
Singers are pretty crude and generally best avoided. Their reputation is hugely over-blown. Although it's true that "black Singers go on forever" they're not great sewers, their ergonomics suck (reverse and stitch length are dire) and actually they do blow up - motor servicing on black Singers is getting to be a spares problem nowadays. White Singers ('70s) are a bad idea. Quite capable machines in their day, they gained a reputation that's undeserved. Today they're flimsy (drive gears collapse at the sight of heavy fabric) and they still have the crude Singer user ergonomics.
Really though, it comes down to the type of shuttle the machine uses. Singers are obsolete (all the variants, some better than others), oscillating shuttles (most Japanese) are lightweight toys, the only ones worth considering are horizontal-axis fully rotating shuttles, either face-on (domestic) or end-on (industrial), as used on better Europeans.
I can't imagine buying a new machine. Can't begin to afford anything that's remotely as good as an old one, and the point about what makes a good one is that it survives age and use well.
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