I don't know when they became common, but my treadle machine, a 1909 model
that belonged to my great-grandmother the dressmaker, has a buttonhole
attachment that was original to the machine. It holds the fabric in a small
hoop, which then moves from side to side to make a zig-zag stitch, and
around to make the buttonhole like a modern attachment. It is a little bit
of trouble to set up, so Grandma used to make single buttonholes by hand as
being faster than setting up the attachment. I seem to remember that 4
buttonholes was the number at which she would drag it out.
That treadle is an amazing machine; it would sew through a piece of metal if
you could find a needle strong enough, and it has attachements to do
everything: hemstitching, blind hemming, zig-zag, the buttonholer, and some
I can't quite figure out.
Melusine
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