first year of the singer red eye treadle sewing machine

I started wondering if I could convert a potted motor version to be treadled and save some money. The belt driven 201-3’s can be found on ebay, but they are typically “refurbished”, ship from Canada or the UK, and cost several hundred dollars. And of course the 201 would have to go on a treadle base, since I’m kind of crazy about sewing on treadle sewing machines. When I read about how absolutely wonderful the Singer 201 is to sew on, I had to have one, of course, since the 328k just isn’t making me happy as my main sewing machine. I added an update to the end of my previous post about the 328k showing the modification I had to make to get the other handwheel to work. I recently got a different handwheel for it, though, so I can treadle it at twice the speed as before. I’d been trying to replace my treadle Singer 252 with a treadle Singer 328k, since I know the plastic gear deep inside the 252 is likely to break at some point in the next few years, but I don’t enjoy sewing on the 328k. But after reading more about this sewing machine, I found out that it came in other versions besides the potted motor – 201-1 (treadle), 201-3 (belt driven motor), and 201-4 (hand crank).

I’d always just thought of the 201 as “that industrial looking model that I can’t put on a treadle base” and ignored it. I quickly realized why I had always ignored this model – in the US, almost every Singer 201 you will find is a 201-2, which is the gear driven “potted” motor version. I’ll be happy to have the adjustable buttonholer when I need another size, though.Īfter seeing how the Singer 201 sewing machine in Peter’s buttonholer video could drop the feed dogs, I of course had to research that model of sewing machine. They do take a bit of fiddling with to get everything set right, so I’ll probably use the template buttonholer if it has the size I want. If you are looking for one, search for Singer part #121795. No one seems to want them for some reason. I bought one of these buttonholers quite inexpensively on ebay. This buttonholer lets you adjust just about everything by turning various wing nuts and screws. Peter made a video demonstrating this adjustable old-style buttonholer on his Singer 201 sewing machine. I was pretty excited to learn that they made buttonholers that can be adjusted to make any size buttonhole. I thought “Wait, what? Did Singer make buttonholers that DON’T take templates?” I’d only heard about the kind of buttonholer with templates, and I’m always complaining that I don’t have exactly the right size template even though I have every size template made for my buttonholer. In this post, he said he made buttonholes with his Singer buttonholer – the one that uses templates.

My VSMAD flare up was triggered by a perfectly innocent comment in a post by Peter Lappin.

First year of the singer red eye treadle sewing machine