Fabric puller

Claim 1

A fabric puller for use in combination with a sewing machine having instrumentalities for sewing a fabric comprising; a pair of fabric-engaging rollers rotatably mounted in biased parallel alignment with said sewing machine instrumentalities, each of said rollers having a shaft, means for urging said rollers toward each other to engage and apply a pulling force on said fabric, said urging means including a stanchion, a pair of vertically spaced apart roller shaft supporting brackets, each of said brackets being pivotably mounted in a cantilever manner to said stanchion, intermeshing cooperating gear means connected to said supporting brackets, resilient means urging said brackets to pivot toward each other to engage and apply tension to said fabric as said fabric is pulled from said sewing instrumentalities of said sewing machine by the rotation of a rotating crank-operated toggle means connected to one of said brackets, means for separating said fabric-engaging rollers from engagement with the fabric positioned therebetween, means for driving each of said roller shafts at predetermined speeds, and a coupling means for each roller shaft connecting said roller shaft to its driving means and supporting and resiliently urging said fabric-engaging rollers into parallel alignment when separated, said coupling means including, for each shaft, a cylindrical helical member for connecting said shaft to the shaft driving means, said driving means including a variable speed gear reducing mechanism whereby the rotation of each of said fabric engaging rollers will rotate at a predetermined angular velocity to control the linear travel of the fabric through the sewing machine instrumentalities.