AN IMPROVED EMBROIDERING ATTACHMENT FOR SEWING MACHINES
Year: 1870

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by William Robert Lake at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
11th June 1870.-A communication from abroad by Nathaniel
Wheeler, of the Wheeler and Wilson Manufacturing Company, of
New York, United States of America.
I, WILLIAM ROBERT LAKE, of the Firm of Haseltine, Lake, & Co.,
Southampton Buildings, London, Patent Agents, do hereby declare the
nature of the said Invention for "AN IMPROVED EMBROIDERING ATTACHMENT
FOR SEWING MACHINES," a communication, to be as follows:-
The said Invention relates to a detachable device or apparatus to be
used upon a sewing machine for the production of embroidery work,
which device is chiefly intended for use upon the well-known "Wheeler
and Wilson" sewing machine, to form a ready and convenient means
whereby the said machine may at any time, without in any way
impairing its operation with regard to the other numerous varieties of
work which it is capable of performing, be adapted to the production
of what is familiarly known as the "herring-bone" embroidery stitch.

page_text: This description of work is produced by the continuous crossing of
two or more threads upon the upper surface of the cloth or fabric, such
threads being secured upon the said fabric by the ordinary sewing
threads of the machine. Various contrivances have been employed for
the production of this stitch, but they have been inconvenient, unsightly,
and expensive, and otherwise objectionable, and have therefore not been
generally adopted.
My improved device or attachment is simple and inexpensive, is
readily attached to and removed from the machine, and is not readily
liable to get out of order. The operative parts of the attachment are
mounted upon a small plate which has a foot, and when the said
attachment is to be used this foot is inserted in the presser foot of the
machine. The embroidery threads are passed through two oscillating
thread carriers, which are both pivotted to the plate, and are so arranged
that their lower ends, through which the embroidery threads pass, cross
each other at each stitch or stroke of the machine.
My Invention consists essentially in the combination of the said
oscillating thread carriers with a self-adjusting switch lever, and in the
combination of the said thread carriers and lever with the needle arm
or other suitable working part of a sewing machine. It also consists in
the peculiar construction and arrangement of the parts of the attachment
as herein-after specified. Although this attachment may be used with
other sewing machines; yet, as before stated, it is more especially
designed for the "Wheeler and Wilson" machine, and it is to this
machine that I refer in the following description:
The plate is preferably of brass or steel, its foot being formed to slide
in the groove in the presser foot of the machine, in which it may be
secured by a small screw or spring catch or other suitable contrivance.
The glass which is fitted into the presser foot is removed to allow the
attachment to be inserted. The switch lever is pivotted to the lower a
end of one of the oscillating thread carriers, and extends upward nearly
to the top thereof, its free end playing between two projecting stops on
the thread carrier. At the back of the said carrier, and secured in the
plate is a small coiled spring, the end of which is passed through an
opening in the carrier, and is secured to the lever; this thread carrier
also has fixed near its upper end a small pin, which extends through a
hole in the plate into a slot in the other thread carrier, which works on

page_text: the other side of the plate. The free ends of the thread carriers are
bent at a right angle, or nearly so, to the other part, and one lies and
works under the other.
The sides of the switch lever are so inclined or curved that the said
lever whose free end is a thin edge or point is gradually increased in
thickness to its pivot or fulcrum, and each side forms an inclined plane
for the needle arm of the machine to act on. At each descent the said
arm passes down the inclined surface of the switch lever, and by its
action thereon crosses the thread carriers, and as the said carriers cross
each other the inclination of the lever is reversed by the action of the
small spring, and its point is adjusted into the proper position to be acted
upon by the needle arm of the machine in its next descent. The stops
on the carrier keep the lever within the proper limits.
The bobbins for holding the embroidery threads are placed on any
convenient part of the machine or stand, and are passed through the
eyes or holes in the free ends of the carriers, which operating as above
described cross the said threads one over the other continuously upon
the top surface of the cloth, while they are secured thereon by the
sewing thread in the usual manner.