Category:Miniature Sewing Machines

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Toy and miniature sewing machines (in Germany, kindernahmaschinen, or KNM) were designed for children, and were usually fully-functional for light work, but normally not suitable for heavy work or thick material (such as thick curtains).

Toys or miniatures?

These machines (in English, "TSM", for "Toy Sewing Machines") were usually quite up to the task of making dolls' clothes, or sewing handkerchiefs or small light bags (one instruction manual suggests making bags for school gym shoes), and some of the better models were perfectly acceptable as small sewing machines for light work without any "toy" qualification.

They did however earn a place in the "toy" category by being intended as educational tools for children. A parent might not want to let a small child loose on the household's expensive and delicate "proper" sewing machine and risk it being broken – giving the child their own miniature machine allowed the child to learn a common useful household skill (making and mending clothes) while seeing it as an enjoyable hobby and as an extension of their existing toys (making clothes for their dolls) – this would then put them in good stead for running a household on a tight budget in later life. Practicing on a "toy" sewing machine would also teach them how the machine worked, and how to treat the mechanism with respect and service it.

Commonalities

The design of a significant number of miniature sewing machines in the C20th look suspiciously similar, often based on the mechanism of the classic Singer Model 20.

External links

Subcategories

This category has the following 5 subcategories, out of 5 total.

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Media in category ‘Miniature Sewing Machines’

The following 59 files are in this category, out of 59 total.