This looks almost the same as my mother’s. Aaah!, the memory lane. In the late 80ties thru the 90ties Mom and I sew all our wardrobe from the scratch, including coats for every season. The machine was so heavily used, that after a while it needed a replacement part, which was impossible to obtain in barely awaken from Soviet era Poland.
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This fellow, “Tock Custom”, took up sewing to make his own costumes.
For anyone who would like some inspiration to pull out your Mom’s old sewing machine, he has some great beginner videos. https://www.youtube.com/c/TockCustom/videos
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Good…
I know refugees who came to this country with only a sewing machine. From Poland. . . via German work camps . . .another chapter. If sewing machines could talk. Do you remember the character of Madame Defarge? She knit the secrets…
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My mother had a singer, it weighed a ton! She didn’t have a spare room to set it up so Dad had to carry it to the kitchen table. While we watched TV she was sewing away madly!
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We found a taker to rehome the old sewing machine!
A thrift store that donates 100% of the proceeds to rehoming cats and dogs!
http://catscradleanimalrescue.com/how-to-help/donate/
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You two are the animal and vintage heros of the day,(and the season)!
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… this is exactly the model that sat in my Grandmother’s sewing / quilting room. My brother inherited it … and it still runs!
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Alicia – I share your passion for sewing. There’s so much satisfaction in getting the creativity flowing!
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Having an idea and then creating something beautiful is one of the coolest things of being human. Find a passion and bring it to life. Explore, grow, create.
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My maternal grandmother had one similar if not identical to that one @Scarmoge, in an alcove at their cottage. I never saw it in use, but as a boy, features different from Mom’s modern machine always caught my eye… old fashioned, black paint, brass details and the exposed hand wheel. What tiny little drawers those were (which triggered this memory.)
Grandma had arthritis yet at some point she made a quilt for me, each of my siblings and likely my cousins. Only mine survived and is of course a precious heirloom. So many little patches of cloth were selected, cut and machine-sewn together on that machine.
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Thanks for that video, my Aussie friend. I have often marveled at how someone was so smart to have figured out how to make the bobbin work to make so many stitches. Just brilliant.
My grandmother sewed clothes for us when we were little: lovely smocked cotton dresses with linen collars edged in hand-tatted lace. She did it all. Later she made us doll clothes from warn out items- wool coats and hats, fancy ball gowns, you name it. Like everyone else’s grandmother, she did it all on her Singer. She passed the knowledge on to my mother who was excellent seamstress as well, had collections of books on tailoring and pattern alteration but, like the perfectionist that she was, she bought a Bernina (Swiss) that was installed in a handsome wooden cabinet that sat in her bedroom. So that is what I learned to sew on. When I graduated from high school, I was given a portable Bernina to take to college. Sew (so) during the 60’s and early 70’s when we hippies were running around in India prints and shapeless caftans, I designed clothes that I made to be different. (It has always been my style).
My current Bernina has a pillow case over it to keep the dust off and there are a few unfinished quilt pieces lying next to it. I find that my sewing these days comes in spurts of interesting projects. I do love the machine, however, and have several others with different capabilities, including an ancient machine (I think it is German) that sews leather. It was made in 1950.
I guess I keep thinking i will retire some day and get back to it. (Lol. I am 73 so I wonder when that will be). Maybe you have inspired something.
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