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For Heavenly Bresser, restoring antique wheels came first. A love for spinning quickly followed.
Heavenly Bresser6 min read
We come to handspinning in our own ways and for our own reasons, and the key to my passion for handspinning has always been the spinning wheel. Before I wrapped my head around basic concepts like twist and ply, I was completely captivated by vintage and antique wheels.
Marked with the occasional bruise or scratch, and missing the occasional part, older spinning wheels have stories to tell. Unfortunately, some of these stories are left untold or undiscovered and can be lost through time. My appreciation for wheels, as well as the stories they carry, began before I actually knew how to spin yarn.
This may come as a shock to some, but I had absolutely no interest in learning anything about handspinning until recent years. While growing up in the city of Chicago, there weren’t any handspinners in sight. Not a single person in my immediate family had taken an interest in yarn crafts. In fact, it wasn’t until college that I discovered yarn and began teaching myself to knit and crochet.
My first spinning wheel purchase was the result of a simple search on eBay in February 2015. My husband spotted a listing for an antique spinning wheel, which I learned much later was a German-style spinning wheel from the early 1900s. The wheel was located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and it would cost me only $35 plus a three-and-a-half-hour family road trip. Sold! The wheel was even more beautiful in person. It was a charming little Saxony wheel with beautiful turnings but not a single maker’s mark anywhere to be found. It had a broken treadle, and the bobbin wouldn’t move independently from the flyer. This became my first repair project.
I carefully looked over the wheel, making a mental note of heavily worn areas. The discolored wood on the treadle, as well as a diagonal groove along the left flyer arm where handspun yarn had nestled into the wood, made it evident that this wheel was loved and used often. And I knew it would be an honor to repair.
I started by making the treadle functional again by replacing the old, ripped leather with new leather and reinforcing it with small upholstery grommets as an accent. Then I disassembled the spinning wheel to thoroughly clean each part. Removing dirt, dust, and grime before finally applying a fresh coat of wax brought me closer to the wheel, and it gave me an opportunity to study its inner workings. After reassembling the wheel, I felt a great sense of accomplishment, but I still wasn’t a handspinner.
Heavenly with some of her antique wheels. Photo from "Antique Spinning Wheel Tour with Heavenly Bresser"
Later that year, I bought and repaired another old spinning wheel. This one was not old enough to be an antique, but it was a jumble of pieces when I found it for $10 at a local resale shop. When I first laid eyes on this “wheel,” it was in a large, white plastic garbage bag, and I could see the outline of spinning wheel parts—flyer, distaff, and the silhouette of a tiny drive wheel—poking through the bag. This wheel took more work to repair—some of the wooden parts were severely damaged, the uprights would not fit properly, and the entire mother-of-all leaned in one direction.
A little bit of sanding and removal of unnecessary layers of paper towel wedged in the upright posts made a great deal of difference. This wheel also had a unique drive wheel, which had been positioned backward on its axle at some point. Using the gentle force of a small hammer on the steel axle and many deep breaths, I eased the drive wheel off the axle. Once I flipped the drive wheel around, it could line up properly with the flyer assembly.
Heavenly's basic repair kit includes a few yards of crochet cotton in various sizes for leaders and drive bands, small scissors, X-Acto knife (not pictured), beeswax, at least one ounce of fiber for test spinning, a tape measure, small steel crochet hooks to use as orifice hooks, tiny leather scraps (not pictured), and twine and leather cording (not pictured). Photo by Pamela K. Schultz
The entire repair job was simple in comparison to what I would see down the line, but it did require some elbow grease. I had no idea if this wheel would eventually spin a yarn I would love, but I knew all of the effort was worth it. The wheel that once lived in a garbage bag had been given a new chance at life.
At this time, I began to compare and contrast the differences between my two now-functional wheels. My second wheel was a castle style with a bobbin-led, Irish tension system. My German-style wheel was a Saxony with a double-drive setup. The castle-style wheel didn’t have a removable whorl, but the German wheel had a removable flyer whorl with two ratios. That was when I came to the realization that each spinning wheel has its own purpose. While each is created for the sole purpose of making yarn, there is more to a spinning wheel than meets the eye. And with this revelation, I knew I was ready to learn to spin.
I started imagining all of the yarns I wanted to make, and I couldn’t get the idea of spinning out of my head. I went to a local fiber shop, The Fold, for assistance. At the shop, I was told that I could test-drive any spinning wheel on display. My first attempt to spin at a spinning wheel actually worked. I had spun my first yarn, and, two weeks later, I purchased a Lendrum Folding Wheel. After experimenting on the modern wheel, I took what I learned and applied it to my antique and vintage wheels.
Heavenly's first modern wheel was a Lendrum Folding Wheel.Photo by Matt Graves
The rabbit hole I once feared had swallowed me alive. To date, I have purchased (and in some cases, rescued) 18 spinning wheels, and 14 of them are antique, vintage, or retro. While modern wheels are more versatile and a joy to spin on, antique and vintage spinning wheels have great sentimental value for me due to the time spent repairing and researching them. Some of these wheels are rare, have had multiple owners, or have even traveled from one continent to the next. Others are more common and may not have traveled very far at all. However, in my opinion, they are all priceless.
Studying spinning wheels helps me stay connected to those who came before and gives me the opportunity to educate myself and other budding fiber artists. I have made it part of my mission to discover the history behind each wheel in my possession, repairing each one to make it function well and recording its story with as much detail as possible. There is always room for a brand-new story to be written with new yarns created on each antique and vintage wheel.
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Adapted from an article that originally appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of Spin Off.
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