We’re celebrating the publication of Stash Books’ Me and My Sewing Machine with a series of posts on one of the best helpers you can have in the handmade life—your sewing machine.
I learned to sew on my mother’s old green Elna, the machine she got as a bride in the late 1950s and used until she died forty years later. That machine was a war horse, built from the same aluminum alloys they use in airplanes, with a tough green metal case that reminded me of an Army jeep and even a little tool kit to keep the machine running—a world away from the sleek space-age Pfaff I sew on now.
Not quite as green as my mother's Elna (Photograph by Norbert Schnitzler, Creative Commons attribution license.)
I don’t know what’s become of the old Elna, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that it’s still out there somewhere, stitching away.
There’s just something about old sewing machines – their solid construction, their simplicity (“Decorative stitches? We don’t need no stinkin’ decorative stitches!”), their familiar names, and most of all, the way they bind us to the women who once owned them, and all the humble and beautiful things those women sewed for the ones they loved. Whenever you sew on a vintage machine, you invoke that long tradition of making and making do.
On a more practical level, buying a vintage sewing machine can be the cheapest way to get started with machine sewing. You can often find an old machine at a yard sale or thrift store and have it tuned up and repaired for a total cost of less than a couple hundred dollars. As with new sewing machines, there are many makes and models of older machines, going all the way back to the treadle-operated machines from the late nineteenth century. Each one has its admirers. One of the best-loved vintage machines of all is the Singer Featherweight 221, which is still popular today even though the last one came off the assembly line in the 1960s.
The Beloved Singer Featherweight 221 Sewing Machine
What Stitchers Love About Their Vintage Machines
Beyond the retro look, there are other things vintage sewing machine enthusiasts like about old machines:
- All-metal machinery, with no electronics or plastic working parts.
- Mechanical mechanism. Settings are changed by turning a knob or flipping a lever.
- Made in North America or Europe.
- Simpler to take apart and reassemble than newer machines. If you are handy, you may be able to do some maintenance and troubleshooting yourself.
Drawbacks of Vintage Sewing Machines
Of course, there are also some disadvantages to buying a vintage machine:
- You may have to buy without test-driving the machine first. There’s no guarantee that a yard sale machine will work at all, or work very well, even after reconditioning.
- It’s harder to find parts or manuals for an old machine, and it may be difficult to get it properly serviced.
- Old machines have a very limited set of stitches. Some vintage machines only sew a straight stitch, while others have a zigzag stitch and maybe a hem stitch or two. If you’re lucky, you may find an automatic buttonhole stitch.
- By far the biggest disadvantage of older machines is that new sewing machines have lots of fabulous new features that the old work horses just don’t have – things like automatic thread trimmers, decorative stitches, automatic needle-up and needle-down settings that keep the fabric in place if you get up from the machine, automatic buttonholer, extra-large throats for quilting, and many more features that make sewing easier and broaden the machine’s creative possibilities. (We’ll cover new machines and their features in a future post.) Even if everything in your world is retro, it’s worth test-driving a new machine just to see if one or more of the newer features turns out to be something you absolutely, positively can’t live without.
Are Old Sewing Machines Really More Reliable than New Ones?
You’ll see this assertion over and over on forums and blogs about vintage sewing machines, but it’s just not true, according to Dan Schoenberg, owner of The Sewing Machine Shop in Walnut Creek, California. Dan has been selling and servicing sewing machines for 20 years.
“People think an all-metal machine is better than one with plastic parts. But there’s no need to use metal for parts that aren’t under constant stress,” he says. “Many parts of a sewing machine don’t get much wear. Even in areas that do get wear, like gears, metal isn’t always the best material. Metal-to-metal gears are noisy. A metal-to-nylon or nylon-to-nylon gear performs just as well, but costs less, is quieter, and doesn’t weigh as much.” The old machines were made with metal because today’s strong and lightweight plastics hadn’t been developed yet. It’s also not true that a simpler machine will be more reliable than a more complex one, Schoenberg says. The key factor in reliability is choosing a machine from a reputable manufacturer.
That said, there’s no reason why a machine that has worked well for decades won’t last a few decades more with proper maintenance.
How to Find a Vintage Sewing Machine
If you don’t have a favorite machine from your childhood that you’re itching to buy, or a relative willing to let you adopt her old machine, it’s time to do some research. Ask sewing friends about their machines. Visit online sewing forums. Haunt the local thrift store. Make friends with your local sewing machine dealer and ask the dealer to keep an eye out for a good machine for you. Once you start looking, you’ll find vintage beauties everywhere. In fact, it’s all too easy to become a rescuer of orphan machines and have them take over your whole sewing space.
Time to Sew!
When you’ve got your new (old) machine home, all ready to go, what next? I’m going to make a little zipper pouch. For years I’ve been intimidated by zippers. But I just got my copy of Me and My Sewing Machine, and the instructions for putting in a center zipper (page 52) look so easy that I finally have the courage to try it.
Check back soon for advice on buying new sewing machines.
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