Here’s a picture which will explain one of the many minor mysteries about vintage Singer attachments.  The Blind Stitch Attachment (Simanco 86649) turns up on the internets relatively often as these things go, but hands up if you’ve seen the box for one before.

Thought so.  We hadn’t either until this one followed us home in a cabinet drawer last month, but now we understand.  That box is so flimp it’s about as much use as a concrete trampoline.  It’s no wonder they’re a rarity 50 years on.

Anyhow, this one’s in Elsie’s collection now, and not because of that tatty old box.  Elsie’s claimed it because this one works reliably.  I don’t know what it is about the blind stitchers, but we’ve found that more often than not, they don’t work properly.  Or if they do, they don’t keep working properly.

The really annoying thing is I just can’t figure out why!  The problem is that every now and then they don’t do the sideways hoppity-skip like they should, and the reason for their misbehaviour is that sometimes that ratchet on the side follows the actuating arm on the down stroke instead of staying put where it was rotated to on the up stroke.  In other words, the ratchet always rotates clockwise on the up stroke like it should, but sometimes it then rotates anti-clock on the down stroke.  Which it shouldn’t.

Taking these things apart, cleaning them and lubricating them never seems to make any difference, and it’s still beyond my powers of reason to work out why, if Singer wanted it do what it’s supposed to do, they designed it quite like they did.

So there you go.

Now you know what the box looks like, and you also know why we rarely sell Singer Blind Stitch Attachments …