eparys

A friend of mine gifted me her old featherweight. The box (and machine) had sat in water and as I an deathly allergic to mold "Miss Mary" (my name for the machine) has gone to a local spa (lol) for a good cleaning and some pampering. The Hubby has ripped all the old covering off the box, repaired it, sanded it and treated the mold. He has also removed and polished all the hinges and clasps. Now I am tasked with recovering it!!

So here is the big question .... If you have recovered your box, what did you use on the outside? I am leaning for something "traditional" and have read about using tolex. But it is not clear to me if that is a good choice. What came off the box was thin and from what I read tolex seems to be fairly thick. What do you all think??

1CharmShort

You can really use any fabric you like.
Tolex is a great choice
here are more ideas:

https://singer-featherweight.com/blo...n-preparations
https://singer-featherweight.com/blogs/schoolhouse/featherweight-case-restoration-ideas
https://singer-featherweight.com/blogs/blog/restore-along-part-5-preparing-the-fabric

Pat M.

I redid a friends with upholstery fabric and fabric glue. Measure everything twice then cut fabric. Glue and let dry.

AlZilla

If you could thrift a large (long) enough leather coat, that might be workable. I recently grabbed a couple of nice ones for 10 bucks each. There's a lot of faux leather out there but these are truly garment leather.

quiltedsunshine

Some of the prettiest featherweight cases I've seen are just the finished wood.

eparys

I agree!! But this box "naked" has some oddities. Clearly a worker in the factory used one of the pieces as scratch paper. There are all sorts of numbers written on it and crossed out - not sure how that would affect staining, as even though you could sand off the pencil marks, the wood underneath might not accept the stain at the same rate. Also the side bottoms are stained badly as it sat in water at some point in its life.