Sewing machine

In a sewing machine comprising a base, a hollow arm extending from the base upright and then horizontally, a needle bar vertically reciprocating at the end portion of the arm and carrying at the end a thread carrying needle, a main driving shaft horizontally extending within said arm, a needle thread taking up lever having a slot type thread guiding eye at the free extremity thereof and being pivotable in a vertical plane parallel to the main driving shaft, a mechanism driven by the main shaft for reciprocating the needle bar and swivelling the needle thread taking up lever in synchronism with the reciprocation of the needle bar for taking up and slackening a loop of the needle thread passing through the slot type thread guiding eye, a cover attached to the end face of the arm for defining a housing in cooperation with the arm so as to nest the needle thread taking up lever in the housing, said cover having an upper side wall and a front side wall and having a small window in the upperside wall thereof elongated in parallel with the main driving shaft to permit the slot type thread guiding eye of the taking up lever to project outside of the cover, a separator means within the cover of sheet metal parallel to the front side wall of the cover to define as a partition wall in cooperation with a front side wall of the cover a space of a volume sufficient to allow the taking up lever to swivel therein but to control a ballooning of a portion of the needle thread passing through the guiding eye of the lever, and path means for the needle thread to travel unrevealedly with the cover.