When I was 12 or 13, I got a sewing machine for my birthday. Or maybe it was Christmas... or... ANYWAY, my mom thought I needed my own machine, so I could make stuff that I wanted to make, and practice my sewing skills while leaving her machine for her to use. It was an old (even at the time) Singer machine that just did straight stitching and it was a work horse. It was in a wooden cabinet, that you could put the machine down into, and fold the worksurface over the top of, to make it more of a table. I used the heck out of that machine for a LOT of years. Finally, I got to move on to machines that would do more that straight stitching, and the old Singer kinda got pushed to the side. Then a few years ago, the cabinet - at 50 something years old, in NM with dry rot, and moving a few times - gave up the ghost. I took the Singer out of the cabinet before it fell out of the cabinet. It was a close thing. Sadly, I didn't have another good place to put that machine, so it sat. On the floor. Collecting dust and sadness. I needed to put it somewhere that would hold the machine up off the table so that the mechanisms could move as they should for sewing. But I didn't know what or where that was.
So then, I was talking sewing machines with my friend, and talked about the machine my mother had. The machine she had taught me to sew on. Mom had a Necchi, a pretty fancy machine for its time, it had cogs wheels that you could put together on a handle, and fit into the top of the machine, to create different stitches, like making button holes. When my mom passed away, I inherited her machine, but I never used it much, so I gave it to a friend before I moved back to Las Cruces. When I went through my crafting stuff a few years after that, I found the instruction manual, the case of cogs, and the foot pedal for that machine. OOOps. But my friend had already gotten rid of the machine (and I don't blame her). BUT my friend looked online, and found a Necchi Supernova, like my mom's for sale, and she bought it. When it came, it had been poorly packed, and the bottom of the machine case (the only part of the case in the box) had been treated roughly in shipping, and broken apart.
(Do you like my story telling so far? Wish you could see the pictures in my head of my memories of these machines.)
Enter Cruces Creatives, the makerspace that I belong to. Well, besides the textile area, and art room, there is a woodworking area, and people who like to work with wood, like I like to work with textiles. We saw an old machine that someone had built a wooden stand for. UREKA!! I posted on the CC communication platform about needing some built for my machine(s), and a week later, I had them! WOOOO!!!
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| A new base, and welcome back! |
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| Hello machine like Mom's! |
Yesterday, I had a goal to actually get the Singer sewing again. I have already had it cleaned and checked, and I plugged it in and put her to work! She's now part of the happy sewing place! She needs to use the templates I have to make some beautiful button holes soon!
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| New quilt block, old machine |
As you can see from the picture of the Necchi, it needs a good clean, and going over, and a new cord (the plug on the old one was in a state. NOT a safe state), so she has gone into the shop for a going over, and probably won't be out until June.
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