Do you know ZPS?

I didn't, but now I do, and I'm a fan! 😃 ZPS is a manufacturer of precision machinery from Czech Republic, established in 1903 and still going today, see their brief history at the company website. They have always made very diverse machinery, and at some point even sewing machines! 😉 The name ZPS came…

Pfaff’s unsurpassed buttonholes

My Pfaff Creative makes unsurpassed buttonholes. It's a computerised machine, so of course she's got programs for several types of lovely buttonholes. But this is not unique and not particularly remarkable. The most remarkable bit is a simple mechanical aid that makes all the difference. The first thing you notice is of course the sliding…

Textima Veritas 8014

A humble 1960s sewing machine from DDR... but why does it fetch £150 at auction? Textima VEB was created after WWII in East Germany by merging various local sewing machine manufacturers (largely stripped of all their machinery in post-war reparations). Notably, that included Clemens Müller and Naumann from Dresden and Singer from Wittenberge. Crême de…

Sewing fine jersey with a twin needle

The finest jersey doesn't do well on a regular sewing machine - you can never get a flexible enough stitch that doesn't go pop when the jersey stretches in wear. For this reason I normally use one of my long bobbin machines to sew it, and with great success. To me, this is the only…

Flexible stitch: stitch length and other adjustments

It is summer again and I am sewing a lot of fine jersey. If you look through my blog, you'll notice that I am rather obsessed with flexible seams - seams that stretch with the jersey instead of ripping under strain. I found that different machines, different mechanism types have varied success at this task,…

Correction on the Hengstenberg/Anker shuttle

In today's post I originally wrote that the shuttle of my Hengstenberg/Anker machine worked in the opposite way to all other shuttles that I know - that loosening the tension screw increases thread tension instead of decreasing it. The screw in my shuttle is permanently jammed all the way in, and this conclusion was based…