Simanco 121094 Singer Darning Foot – the tiny one.

I recently acquired one of these in a box of attachments labelled for a Singer 66k so having located the presumed missing spring from within the folds of the box I put it back together and decided to try it.  To begin with, I had a LOT of trouble with it and was profoundly disappointed as I had harboured such high hopes for it but I’m extremely relieved to report that I got there in the end and as is so commonly the case with Singer items it was user error.

I prepared and hooped a sample of cotton fabric and tried the foot on the 201k.  No joy.  The ring at the bottom of the foot didn’t rest on the fabric but hovered about 4mm above it so there was no obvious purpose for the spring at all and the stitches were mainly skipped.  I checked the threading of the upper and lower…all fine.

I came over to my PC and did a little digging on the internet and found out that it was designed for use on a Featherweight.  No problem; I took out my 222k and set it up with the foot.  Same thing.  By now I was really scratching my head so headed back to the internet.  Finally, I thought that I had found a clue on the Needlebar website.  The foot was shown there with a note stating that it was produced for use on the Featherweight 221, initially to be used with feed dog cover 121309 and latterly with 108002.

This seemed to offer an explanation.  Both my 201k and my 222k have droppable feed dogs but the 221 uses a feed dog cover so perhaps it was this feed dog cover which raised the bed by those crucial millimetres.

I was still perplexed though especially as none of the online sales sources stressed the need for a feed plate and furthermore most of them stated that it could be used on any low-shank side clamping machine with equal success.

Taking the foot off the machine I noticed something unusual about the clamp.  Most feet slot straight on to the presser bar and don’t have any vertical play but this one was different.  It had a slot shaped like a capital ‘T’ which allowed the foot to be mounted higher or lower than the central point, presumably to allow the foot to rest lightly on fabrics of all different thicknesses.

By now it was late, so I decided to leave it and try again in the morning.  After breakfast I was careful to mount the foot as low on the presser bar as was possible.  The ring now lay lightly on the surface of the fabric as it ought to and the result was perfect!  The spring twitched almost imperceptibly and the stitch was gorgeous!  Once again I am in awe of a Singer attachment.

A close-up of the tiny darning foot.

See how, with the foot incorrectly fitted, there is a gap below it, even with the presser foot lever lowered. This results in skipped stitches.

With the foot correctly fitted, it lightly skims the fabric and the stitch and control is the best I have experienced with any darning foot.

Note the gap in the foot below the presser foot screw. This is the bottom of the shaped slot allowing for vertical adjustment which I mentioned in the text.

For comparison, this is the foot photographed next to the normal, straight stitch foot. Note how small it is and also the shaped slot allowing for vertical movement when securing the foot in place.

Copyright of the blog owner 2011