Mark, his Mum, and I went to New Norfolk in Tasmania and had coffee in a little shop that was tricked out with vintage everything. We sat on retro sofas surrounded by fabulous “props”. Just for interest, I’m wearing the Calvin Klein top I wrote about in my last post.
Anyway, one of the things in the shop was this glorious little sewing machine. I hunted around on it to see if there was a price tag, but sadly no. I loved the colour, and instantly decided that I was going to find one, come hell or high water. I needed a sewing machine to leave at my Mother-in-Law’s house for me to use when I visited. 
Note the colour? A bit less turquoise and slightly more duck egg blue. This is an H G Palmer Princess sewing machine and research shows that it is a generic sewing machine made in Japan and sold everywhere under different brand names. This one was badged by the H G Palmer department store in Sydney. The electrical components are Australian, apparently.
There are some lovely elements to this machine, apart from the colour. For instance, look at the light – how cool is that?
The machine hasn’t been used for years and years, so I ducked down to the shops and bought some sewing machine oil and set about cleaning and oiling it. I downloaded the manual from the inter webs so I knew which parts needed oil (lots of them, apparently).
Not unexpectedly, there aren’t too many tools with the machine so I needed a brush. Cue Mark’s Mum’s pastry brush – perfect and she assured me it wasn’t used for anything to do with cooking! Look at how little dust or lint there is in this machine!!
Once we cleaned it (and that’s Mark’s hand BTW), it just purred along. It sounded much better and I managed to find a stray piece of thread caught in the bobbin case which may have caused a problem or two with the sewing. Interestingly, the bobbin system is identical to the Bernina so I felt really comfortable with taking it all apart for cleaning.
It’s a zigzag machine, and there are cams that give different zig zag patterns. The machine also came with a variety of feet and a collection of bobbins. The case looks brand new, which is really unusual. All the ones I’ve seen on the internet have been really beaten up.
The attachments come in these really cool little boxes, which are duck egg blue plastic. 
I was overjoyed to see this needle threader. How cute is this, and what’s more, it works!!
A last look at this beautiful machine. I’ve already made a couple of tiny little things on it, and done an alteration for MIL.