About Those Sewing Machines...

I’ve gotten a couple of requests to do a blog post about the sewing machines. My long-time readers will be familiar with this obsession, but I have quite a few newbies here who need to be brought up to speed.

I’ve always been fascinated by textiles. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Charles, kept a bag of scrap fabric in the cabinet under the sink in the back of the classroom. Whenever I had completed my work and had time to burn, I took out that bag of scraps and sewed things. Little things. Things I can’t even remember now. I embroidered. And I knit. However, being of that generation where girls were encouraged to aim higher than domestic pursuits, I managed to graduate from high school without ever taking a home ec class.

[If I were ever able to go back and talk to my younger self, I would suggest that the most useful classes I could take—the ones that would serve me best as an adult—would be accounting, home ec, and botany. Calculus and molecular genetics have not been quite as useful. Live and learn.]

My mother is a skilled seamstress and made a lot of our clothes, so there was no need for me to learn how to sew anything. She taught me to knit and I took to that like a duck to water. I did buy myself a sewing machine in 1991 and made all of my kids’ Halloween costumes, including a very elaborate Belle dress for DD#1 out of red satin, but I was completely self-taught and a bit of a hack.

Six or seven years ago, the husband came home from work one day and said that one of his customers had a Singer Featherweight that they planned to sell and did I want it? (Let us all take a moment here to appreciate that the husband knew that a Singer Featherweight had some value.) He traded labor on that job and that machine came to live here. I don’t sew on it nearly enough, but it’s fun when I do.

Once they were on my radar, I started seeing vintage sewing machines all over the place. I like to tinker. I also inherited from my father the need to buy old things and fix them up and get them running again. He once brought home an old mantle clock consisting of nothing but pieces of wood in a paper bag. He put it back together, stained and polished it, installed a mechanism, and got it working.

The next machine that came to me was advertised on Craigslist. The description said only that it had belonged to the seller’s aunt, a professional seamstress. I met the seller at a storage unit in Kalispell and came home with this, for $40:

I had never heard of the Necchi brand. It’s Italian. (How did it end up in Montana?) The machine was in good shape for being almost 70 years old, but the wiring was shot. I asked the husband if we could rewire it. Thus, I learned basic soldering and wiring skills, and fitted this machine with a new, more powerful motor and an electronic foot pedal. This is my beloved Vittorio, named for the founder of the Necchi Sewing Machine Company. I love this machine so much that if the house were on fire, I would save it or die trying. I sew on it almost daily. It functions basically as an extension of my body and if you’ve ever had a tool like that, you know what that’s worth.

The other machine I can’t live without is also a Necchi—a BV, which is an industrial model. It lives here in my office:

This machine came from a department store in Salt Lake City where it was used to sew draperies. My friend Tera, who travels to SLC frequently, picked up the machine and brought it back to Montana for me. It’s essentially a bigger, beefier version of my little Necchi. The machine came in a table with a clutch motor. I took the motor off the table and moved the table top to a set of industrial treadle irons. This machine is powered entirely by my legs. I use it when sewing waxed canvas bags. It makes the most beautiful topstitching of all my machines.

[I could wax poetically about Necchis (I have a few more), but I think I’ll save that for another blog post.]

Word got around. People started offering me machines they found in their garages and attics. I came down one morning to find one had been left on my porch overnight. I hated the idea that any of these would end up as scrap or in the landfill. There were machines tucked into every nook and cranny of our house, including three of the four bathrooms. I’ve slowed down considerably on acquisitions; I simply don’t have room. And honestly, only a few models have any real value. When I visited the Sewing Machine Museum in London last year, our tour guide said something that stuck with me: Old sewing machines are like toasters. They are everywhere. And like most toasters, they aren’t worth much, even though a lot of people who find grandma’s Singer in the attic think it’s going to fund their retirement.

[The All Saints Spitalfields stores are notorious for using vintage sewing machines in their decorating schemes. It pains those of use who collect them—the machines have been welded so they are no longer operational—but there really are a lot of old sewing machines in the world.]

When the husband moved over to the new shop, I took over the old garage. I’ve moved most of my machines in need of repair out there, along with my supplies:

Some of these are donor machines that give up their parts to fix other machines. Some will get fixed up and donated to groups that need them. You can also see my Singer 31-15, which is another industrial machine in a treadle base.

So now I have a dedicated spot to work. Hopefully I can find some time this winter to get back to tinkering with machines. My sewing skills have increased exponentially (meaning I have learned to do things properly) and I’ve tackled all sorts of projects from Cordura generator covers to quilts to clothing to waxed canvas bags.

*******************************************************

I registered for that Laura Heine collage quilt class in Spokane in November, and yesterday morning, I got a text from my friend Tera letting me know that she had also signed up for the class. Yay! We’ve rented an Airbnb for the weekend and we’re making a mini-vacation out of it. We’ve been wanting to do this for a long time—take a class and a trip together—so I am thrilled that this worked out.

And I need to note here the passing of two knitting luminaries in recent weeks: Cat Bordhi and Annie Modesitt. I did not know either of them especially well, but we often taught at the same knitting conferences. Annie, in particular, did not deserve what life threw at her; her husband was diagnosed at a young age with multiple myeloma, and just before his death two years ago, she was diagnosed with an aggressive lymphoma. Cat also died from cancer. If you are any kind of knitter, their books and patterns are well worth seeking out.

Life is short. Make the most of it. As Amy at A Farmish Kind of Life notes, “Eat that cake while you can still taste it.”