Sweet River Studios

I worked on the treadle desk for a week or two before working on the sewing machine. So I turned the machine to the underside and got busy. I took a soft painters brush and cleaned out the heavy bits of dust first but a lot was still stuck because it was plastered in sewing machine oil but I did my best.  Next, up I slathered it in Gojo and let it sit for a while, then started the process of wiping it off, reapplying and repeat, repeat and repeat it again. I used a lot of shop towels, Q-tips and scotch brite pads. Below is some before and after pictures of the underside.                                                                                Before                       ...

After watching dozens of videos on YouTube, I got the general idea on how to clean a treadle sewing machine and what not to do, I felt confident I could begin. Now, a lot of the people who know what they're doing, take the entire treadle apart to clean it. And perhaps they're machine was so bad they had to but I'm not that confident and besides, I simply don't have enough room to do that and I'm more likely to loose important bits and wouldn't be able to put humpty dumpty back together again. So I'm taking it slow and doing one bit at a time. First, I simply took the drawers out and took a soft bristled painting brush and knocked all the heavy dirt off first. The bristles get into all the small nooks and crannies of the desk design. Then I got Murphy's oil soap and some shop towels and Q-tips and started wiping everything down.  The oil soap got a lot of grime off but not the really ground in stuff. So onto deep cleaning. I used Gojo original hand cleane...

Last fall, I decided to try my hand at refurbishing something over the winter. Something I had never done before and I didn't really have anything in mind. So, after some internet surfing and going down the YouTube rabbit hole, I found myself watching video's on how to restore vintage singer sewing machines. And the more I watched, the more interested I became in these old machines. After all, I sew and quilt so it peaked my interest. I started digging into the history of the sewing machine, which I will not get into here, and realized that the actual technique for machine sewing really hasn't changed all that much in the last 100 years or so, which I thought was pretty interesting.  And I thought, maybe I could find an old treadle sewing machine and restore that over the winter. I've never done anything like that and some of those old machines are pretty cool. I also knew that they are fairly common and not that expensive and I thought it would be a nice affordable pro...