I'm addicted to old machines and doing things the hard way, so it made perfect sense to find a rare old sewing machine and start hemming bandanas and scarves in house rather than send them out to a local contractor.
Not so fast. Meet the Merrow. It came in wretched condition, covered in years worth of rusty lint-filled grease and with stripped and mismatched fasteners. But with some elbow grease and replacement parts, it runs as nicely as the day it left the Merrow Machine Co. factory in Hartford Connecticut 43 years ago. That sound!
The Merrow M-2DNR is renowned for producing the finest machine-made purl hem. When it comes to hems made on an overlock machine, people are probably most familiar with 3 thread setups that produce an ok, but I think much less attractive hem.
The Merrow uses only two threads, a needle thread and lower looper thread, a very narrow chaining finger, and an extremely short stitch length (we're running 24-36 stitches per inch) to produce a rolled hem that's as narrow as 1/16" wide. Ours are so tiny and beautifully wrapped they flow like the fabric itself.
In addition to the current line of bandanas and scarves, we just added a few new pieces available in extremely limited numbers. All are piece-dyed in our natural indigo vat right here in the shop and feature a lovely Merrowed hem with a contrasting needle stitch. The bandanas are a generous 28" x 28" Austrian cotton batiste. We'll be adding 100% Irish hankie linen scarves shortly – light and airy 16" x 68" – perfect for spring!