Zig-Zag Foot

Have you ever seen a zig zag foot before?  One of the ladies at the T.O.G.A. had one.

 It was short shank and fit right on my Singer 99 hand-crank.  I had never seen one before.  It had a perfect zig-zag stitch.  I am definitely going to keep my eye open for one of these.  It was super easy to figure out, I even made a video to show you, it's at the end of the post.

 For those of you who are not familiar with the older vintage machines, most of them are just the straight stitch.  I was looking for information on when the zig-zag stitch was added to machines, this is the information I found:  The Necchi, first imported from Italy in 1947, introduced the zig-zag machine to domestic sewing. Invented in the late 19th century, zig-zag machines had previously been used only for industrial sewing.  When creating a zigzag stitch, the back-and-forth motion of the sewing machine's needle is controlled by a cam. As the cam rotates, a fingerlike follower, connected to the needle bar, rides along the cam and tracks its indentations. As the follower moves in and out, the needle bar is moved from side to side. Sewing machines made before the mid 1960s mostly lack this hardware and so cannot natively produce a zigzag stitch, but there are often shank-driven attachments available which enable them to do so.

Here are a couple of pictures of the box and instruction manual.

 Wait until you see how the foot works!  Since the needle does not move, the foot moves the material!

I love learning about all of these old feet.  I need to learn how to use all of the feet I do have, I really want this one to add to my collection.

Missy