The good news is I don't have to buy a new sewing machine.
When we got married (in 1977) we bought a bed and a new Sony TV. Everything else -- and we had an apartment full of stuff -- was either a wedding gift or a hand-me-down. All the living room furniture had come from my great-uncle Joe, who had died a few months earlier at 92. Walking in, it looked like an elderly couple must live there.
After the dust settled and we were all moved in, I took the last $200 I had in cash and went to the Singer store and bought a sewing machine. It just seemed to me that it was an essential, like the pots and pans. In truth, probably more so to me, since I'm not that frequent a cook. But I had the Farberware (thanks, Mom) and I needed the Singer. Case closed.
Is it even possible to kill a Singer sewing machine? My sister had bought some other brand, and when it died, she convinced my mother to pass her Singer on to her. She still uses it. It's the one my parents bought in 1959 so that when my Grandma Sadie came to visit she would have a machine to work on. Grandma's treadle-operated Singer was still going strong back home in Massachusetts; she probably got it as a wedding gift in 1912. (She and Grandpa were both tailors by trade.) I wish I knew whatever happened to that old classic; I don't, but I'll bet it's still working someplace.
I don't sew what you could call often, but I can. I like that. I'm not much of a cook, but when I need to sew, baby, I can. I've made a whole lot of Halloween costumes in my day, and when the grandchildren come along, I'm ready for more. I worked in a fabric store when I was a kid, my first job, and what Grandma hadn't already taught me, I picked up there. My mother could run up a seam, but I could make stuff. I could fix stuff. When we were looking for a house lo these many years ago, it had to be one with room to keep my sewing machine out all the time.
It's in the basement, near the laundry area. I went down a month or two ago to fix something, but the machine was not itself. No tension in the thread. The bobbin thread didn't interlock with the main thread. I put the thought out of my head, made the repair by hand, and moved on. My Singer could not be dead. I would deal with it another time.
My darling eldest daughter is someone who needs to learn things on her own. When she wanted to sew some stuff as a kid, she went down and somehow made the sewing machine work. I don't know how, she wouldn't let me teach her anything. Years later I saw her sewing something on it and I suggested that she put the presser foot down and it would help. Wow, she never knew that thing went up and down. Hmmm. What else could she have been doing to my precious all these years?
I got an email ad from Costco this morning for a very cool new Singer. Not that expensive, looks nice, does magical things. I saved the email, and headed for the basement.
Cooing sweetly to the Singer, I carefully reset all the knobs and dials. (A machine with absolutely NO computer chip anywhere! All mechanical, all the time! Imagine that.) I reached tentatively for a fabric scrap nearby, dropped the presser foot, and gingerly pressed the pedal.
Aaah. A seam. Changed the stitch size, the thread tension ... aaah.
I love gadgets, the newer and more gadgety the better. But I never ever ever want to replace my Singer. I want to make Halloween costumes for my great-grandchildren on it. I want them to marvel at a machine that only needs to be plugged in and have pressure applied to the foot pedal. It's not a treadle, but it'll do.
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