ing
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