Poorly

Unfortunately, among the souvenirs I brought back from Edinburgh was a particularly bad cold/flu thing. There has been no sewing or knitting since I got home. On the first day, I felt too ill to even make a cup of tea. (To anyone who knows me IRL, this demonstrates just how bad things were!)

So for this week's post, some photographs of sewing machines in Edinburgh.

Starting with this wonderful carved sign on Candlemaker Row

There seemed to be a great many machines on display in various shop windows, but reflections made it hard to get decent pictures.

I'm a sucker for a pretty decal

Two more, plus bonus biscuit tin

Things were easier in the National Museum of Scotland. Seven machines of various makes are on display in the Window on the World, a four-storey high installation in the Grand Gallery.

Different ages, makes and stages of manufacture

Of course, the main connection between Scotland and sewing machines is Singer. Its Kilbowie factory was the largest in the world when it opened in 1885, and at its peak it produced more than one million machines a year. This connection is recognised in the museum's Science and Technology wing, with a display of three machines from different eras, a 12K from 1881, a 222K from 1958, and a 518 from 1978.

Top to bottom: 518, 222K, 12K

But the exhibit which thrilled my nerdy little heart the most wasn't actually a Singer. It was one of the first six of the 1846 type lock stitch sewing machines made by Elias Howe.

History!

While the basic principles of the stitch-forming mechanism haven't changed much since, how the fabric passes through the machine certainly has. Here, the seam to be sewn had to be pinned or held onto the large grey metal ring just visible at the bottom left (click here for a much better image), which rotated a little with each stitch. So of course, the operator had to stop frequently to pin more of the seam in place. Thank goodness for the invention of feed dogs and flat bed machines!