When machines are moved by the foot, there are many objections to running the whole machine while winding the shuttle reels.  We have, therefore, several useful devices for releasing the balance wheel of the machine from the main shaft, while winding.  These are to be found both on Wheeler & Wilson’s manufacturing machine and upon Singer’s highly finished “Family” machine, which also carries a most ingenious automatic reel winder, capable of doing all the work itself, and ceasing to act as soon as the bobbin is filled.

The setting of the needle in a sewing machine was once quite a task.  Ofttimes it had to be adjusted by chance, in other instances by certain guiding marks upon the needle bar.  It is gratifying to know that all this has been done away with, and that the needle has only to be inserted into the bar, and fastened by turning a small screw.  These are styled self-setting needles, and are usually so arranged that they cannot be adjusted wrongly as to the position of the eye.

In the Willcox & Gibbs machine, and in Singer’s single thread machine, shown here, we have an intermittent tension arrangement, which clamps the thread at the right moment, and differs from ordinary tension devices, inasmuch as it may be said to be automatic.  The feeder, too, on these machines is of excellent design, while the arrangements that have been introduced into the Willcox & Gibbs straw hat sewing machine are surprisingly effective in spinning up a hat from a loose roll of braid.  Speaking of straw hat machines, mention should be made of Wiseman’s hand stitch apparatus, as improved by Messrs. Willcox & Gibbs, and shown here this evening.  This machine employs two needles, and makes a stitch resembling hand work at intervals, producing a short stitch at the center of the hat, and automatically widening the space between the stitches as the distance from the center increases.  The machine itself is of wonderful ingenuity, and must be examined to be understood.

The stitch making itself is, I believe, quite new, and is also of much interest.  A pair of needles, the width of a stitch apart, rise from beneath through the material.  One of these is an ordinary machine needle, threaded; the other is a barbed needle.  After rising above the surface, the loop of the threaded needle is seized by a “threader,” and thrown into the barb of the barbed needle.  The needles then descend, and the feed occurs, being the length between stitches.  Upon the ascent of the needles again against the material, the loop is both given off the barb and is entered by the threaded needle, completing the stitch.

Of Button Hole Machines.—­The mechanism of button hole machines is so intricate, that I can only attempt on this occasion to partially elucidate the construction of one of them, recently introduced, namely, Singer’s, which automatically cuts, guides, and stitches the work.

[Illustration:  FIG. 9.]