Something I learned about attachments that might help you.

Forums are great, aren't they?  I learn so much reading about vintage sewing machines on Ravelry and other social media.  I was listing a set of attachments in my Etsy shop today, and I realized that they included a type of attachment foot that used to puzzle me.  Finally some helpful soul explained, and it was really a light bulb for me, so I thought I would share.

One of the things about buying sewing machine stuff in thrift shops, is you find bags that may contain parts for all different types of machines in one plastic bag.  When you get home and untangle the mess, sometimes I would find a piece that looked like this:

Now how the heck does something like that attach to the machine? 

Well you need an attachment foot

This little doohickey comes with a set of feet, and lets you swap them out.  They fit together like this:

Hope this helps someone, it did help me!  

And for eye candy, here is the really nice set of Kenmore attachments I was photographing when I decided to share this tidbit.

I don't know if you can see how clean and shiny they are, but they look super clean.  If they weren't in the original box, complete with oil stain and $3 price tag I would have thought they were brand new.

White 1514, great mid-century looks.

I had to combine parts from two machines to get this one together.

I bought both of them from the same seller a year ago. One was in a cabinet, but the one I fixed up ended up being the parts machine head. Funny story, someone did the same thing, they took the best parts off of both machines, and put it in the cabinet. But they either didn’t have the set screws, or didn’t know they existed, and so they welded the machine to the hinges, burning the cabinet and the machine.

So I switched all the needed parts back to the “parts” machine, and put it in a plastic case I had. It took awhile figuring out every little bit that was missing, and polishing the chrome -- but once I got it al together it stitched perfectly right away.

A manual and box of attachments came with the machine, but if you are lucky enough to find a cool retro turquoise and chrome White 1514 you can download a copy of the manual here at the Singer site. Singer has many White manuals, just type a W in front of the model number to look them up.  Or just type a W to search all the White manuals they have.

Here is a link to the manual for the attachments from that era http://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/Trade-Literature/Sewing-Machines/pdf/sil10-215.pdf.