Vintage Treadle and Hand Crank Sewing Machine Heaven

This afternoon my husband and I took a leisurely Sunday drive to the neighbouring town of Latrobe to have a look at their Antiques Fair. We met Coral Howe a lovely kind, friendly and helpful lady who was displaying a small portion of her extensive vintage sewing machine and glass lamp collection. I hope I can remember the names of them all.

Coral Howe

These were display items only and not for sale. I concentrated on taking pics of the vintage sewing machines and there were some beauties.

 

This machine was a Ward and was one of the first free arm machines. The machine bed swung down to reveal the free arm

Ward Free Arm

 

Ward Free Arm

This lovely shaped machine was called an Avenue

Avenue Sewing machine

This lovely machine with beautiful little mother of pearl flowers is an early Singer.

Early Singer

 Coral repainted this ABC machine as it had been badly painted in an inappropriate colour previously.

Coral also had this Rowley repainted as it had been a blue colour in very bad condition previously.

 
I forgot to ask the name of this one below. The decals are just beautiful

There were four treadles on display including this Pfaff

Pfaff treadle

 a small Willcox and Gibbs in a treadle case, this was about the size of a child's toy.

Willcox and Gibbs

A Howe treadle

Howe treadle

 

 

and I have left the best to last. This is a gorgeous Singer that was built in 1878 and belonged to Mrs Kate McKenzie. Her name is engraved in the mother of pearl on the machine bed.

The machine was placed in this exquisite treadle cabinet made from what looked like walnut. The case on the top did not lift off as a separate unit but lifted up and folded down. The whole case came apart and folded in an under like the wings on Batman's car

 

 

 

Coral found a piece of paper in one of the drawers and she rewrote what was written onto another piece of paper to preserve the original

 

Kate's name on the machine bed

 

Just look at the decoration on the foot pedal