What happened to Singer 201K, #8304

By the time a sewing machine falls into my hands, it has generally had a long and interesting life: Take this machine for example: The serial number, EA146845, tells me it was made at Killbowie in 1932, one of a batch of 10,000 machines, which, as near as I can tell was the first batch ever made. This makes this machine the 8304th 201 built for production.
It shipped with a spoked wheel, which means that likely it was a hand crank equipped or in a treadle table. It came with a Singer hand crank, so that rules out the treadle stand.
I bought it from a young woman who told me that she got it from her "Gran". She was selling it because she didn't know how to sew, and ironically lives up above a shop where they make Tee shirts. (I was about to suggest that she walk downstairs and flutter her eye lashes at any hand male and ask for some lessons, but I really wanted the  machine...lol)
It came in a particle board Japanese table with a green motor and controller from a 200 or 300 series Singer, that didn't work, the hand crank and a clone instruction manual, titled "You have invested wisely....lol.
I didn't have a period correct motor on hand so I replaced the old green one with a newer .95mp one and matching controller, serviced the the whole thing and put it in a faux crocodile clone carry case.
The result of this; It's a fast and powerful 201, that breezes through 7 layers of Sunbrella, and just about everything else I have shoved under it's presser foot. Of course, because it's a 201, it's makes a great stitch while doing so.

Candy Floss

What can I say? It's red, blue, key lime pie green, light green, orange and probably another couple of colors, that I don't remember.......
That said, this 1960's Japanese straight stitcher will happily munch its way through 6 layers of Sunbrella, most any other upholstery fabric andn set up properly, will also sew 1/4" of soft vegetable tanned leather. Tough! Then when you're done with that, it will sew all regular fabrics and not really notice the difference.

The Fabulous Miss Coral

Playing with paint, The fabulous Miss Coral:
Kenmore shipped this clone in the usual black, sometime in the 1950s. By the time it got to me it had all the usual finish issues (and then some). So I decided to refurbish it and give it some 50's flair and sophistication with a two-tone coral and chestnut paint job in a faux alligator skin case.
I like the results. I think that she is, as the French would say, "une mademoiselle, trez chic"

What should I feed my baby Kenmore?

What should I feed my baby Kenmore?
 I found this cute little Kenmore 158.104 in a thrift store. I thought to myself, maybe, I should do a Kenmore family portrait with Miss Coral, and Lou (the Locksmith) freearm standing in for parents. It's a tough little machine with a double reduction drive and I can hardly wait to see what it grows up into.
The question that troubles me though, is what do I feed it?

Key Lime Pie

 Key Lime Pie. It's funny how your vices can gang up on you in the most surprising ways. For example, I have this vice on hot summer days... yummy Key Lime Pie with whipped cream. Then I have this all year round vice called vintage sewing machine addiction. I never expected those two things would ever connect... Until I came in to a paint color called Key Lime green......... Pie anyone?

supervisors.....Always we got supervisors..

Can't seem to avoid supervisors....even at home. Here for example, is Alice, who is our QA manager here at Flamingo Sewing, hard at work, supervising the re-assembly of this 221.

Singer never made any red 221's (or green or blue or yellow ones). So any red ones you see, have been repainted. Singer tended to be stodgy in their color choices. The only color options they offered were the traditional black, tan and mint green. You had to know, that that just wouldn't  last....Someone was going to custom paint one red and show it to their friends.........
You can buy them online now, in just about any color you you can imagine. If you are willing to fork over a lot of money, and wait six months, you can get them painted in whatever color you personally prefer. You can even get ones with hand painted flowers on them. What a change!
This one is for sale, and I wouldn't mind if the buyer traded in a black one. I have sone ideas involving yellow paint and black decals.....

Playing with paint: the tritone clone

Playing with paint: The Tritone clone. I learned to drive during the muscle car era, and fell in love with hot rods and wild paint jobs early. So, when I came into this Kenmore "high performance", 1.2 amp, and decided to myself an upholstery sewer, it just had to be a Hot Rod paint job....I really couldn't help myself you see, the motor was a sickly green, and the clone was a blaaah blue.......

Playing with paint: Science fiction and sewing machines: The Red Nebula.
 A customer asked for a treadle head in a red and black ombre pattern. So I started spraying with a red rattle can in one hand and black in the other in search of inspiration. The blackness put me in mind of outer space, and the title of a short story I read one time in Astounding or one of the other golden age science fiction pulps.
As I recall the covers of those often featured a space suited hero, rescuing the scantily clad heroine from the clutch of a bug eyed monster. Since my customer liked the name and the outer space vibe, I asked if she would like a tiny space ship or two, or maybe even a BEM, but, being way too young and beautiful to have ever read those magazines, she just gave an odd look and politely declined........sigh

Playing with paint........PRECY

 

Precy, who is one of my favorite co-workers, mused out loud that she wanted a PINK sewing machine. Further she wanted it to have HER name on it, so no-one else would use it. This presented some difficulties as I had neither one of those in stock. However, here at Flamingo sewing, we like to keep our customers happy,....and Canadian Tire had Candy Pop Pink paint on sale, and there was this semi ugly light brown and white old Japanese zig-zag hanging around on the sun porch, and sewing machine painting weather has commenced.

I thought that she might like some flowers too....

The Featherweight Democracy

 Here are 3 Singer 221's. The finish on them ranges from downright ugly to mint. They range in price in price from $150 to $350. What is interesting to me is that they all sew equally well. Something for every one.......

The Singer 133K13

This 133K13 stopped by for a little repair work......
 Big is the adjective that comes to mind......Someone else big and strong carried in and out for me.
This machine is a darner for leather. It has no feed dogs. For all it's size and weight, it's actually a very simple gear driven machine. Took about 20 minutes to sort it out and have it turning freely again........A testament to times when things were made to be repaired.

Parting out treadles....

 Interesting Fact:
You can, if you want, go online today, and order from China,  a Chinese copy of  of the Japanese JA2-2 (Singer clone), sewing machine, to install in your brand new cast steel treadle table, from the same shop. Depending on how much freight costs you are willing to pay, you can be up and sewing on it in anything from a week to 3 months from now..

The Chinese treadles are sold into developing nations where electricity can be scarce, just like it was in the West before the 1930's. I don't doubt that the children and grand children of new treadle machine purchasers today, will have the same sentimental attachment to those machines, the many in North America have today.

This sentimental attachment is part of the price of treadles of treadles today. It was their grandmother's or their mothers, it still sews, and it's a beautiful piece of furniture. It must be worth a lot of money..... Well no. It's beautiful, but it's a piece of furniture, unlikely to ever be used except by some sewing machine enthusiasts or people living off the grid, and Singer made millions of them right up the 1960's.

So, given that treadles are a thriving business today (at least in Asia), that I have no idea what my grandmothers in Europe sewed on, and that my mother demanded and got a Singer 222, I have no sentimental attachment to treadles what so-ever. On the other hand, I do have an appreciation of their history, their  beauty and their capabilities. On the third hand, I sell sewing machines....lol

So what do I do with treadles? I buy them cheap and part them out. I make some money, and a clunky old dust collector with peeling veneer, gets a new life. The heads with good decals, go to collectors, the ones with crappy decals go int my pile for repainting and resale as decorator pieces. The model 66's. 15s and 201s get serviced and get resold to people who will use them. Those lovely Victorian  cast iron legs, get sold to people who make tables out of them. The drawers get resold, some to people who are restoring their own treadles, or to folks who just like the idea of having lots of little drawers in their home decor.

Ironically, the value of the parts callously resold, can be as much as or greater than the original sentiment inspired asking prices that some people ask for their whole treadles......Funny how things work out.........

Elvis Presley's Mama's Sewing Machine

I buy and sell vintage sewing machines, which is a fancy way of saying that I trade in second, third and fifth hand small appliances. Now, there is only so much you really say about an old appliance such as a sewing machine: It's a Singer; It runs; It makes a nice stitch and it was made in 1940 something.

This got dull after a while, and my postings looked like all the other vintage sewing machine postings on Craigslist. So,I felt that, a little creativity was called for to make my postings stand out. A 15-91 becomes "One Tough  S.O.B. of a Sewing Machine" and an old straight stitcher, can be posted as "your Grandmother's Sewing machine". It helps sales and reduces the tedium of posting the same ad for the same machine in several different places.

But, occasionally, it's not enough to come up with eye catching headlines. Something inside me demands a more free wheeling approach, till I become like Kipling's Emmanuel Pyecroft, "manufacturin' lies to correspond". This is one of my favorite ones, which I have, so far, managed to refrain from posting........

                               ELVIS PRESLEY'S MAMA'S SEWING MACHINE

In his song 'The Elvis Presley Blues" Jimmy Buffet, a fellow Mississippian, says that Elvis was "Just a country boy, who put a shirt that his mother made and he went on the air". ( He also said, in 'Oyster and Pearls' that Elvis, "was the only man from north-east Mississippi, who could shake his hips and still be loved by red necks, cops and hippies", which is a really great lyric if you ask me.) But I digress....back to the matter at hand:

So, we know that Elvis's mother had a sewing machine, and likely she sewed him a shirt on it, because that was common thing for mothers to do, back in the early 50's. Now, that shirt, if still exists, is, no doubt, in a museum somewhere. But where is the sewing machine? Could this 1940's Canadian made model 15, have found it's way down to the Magnolia state, just in time to help launch the career of the greatest singer of all time? Could this Singer have sewn that shirt? And if it did, how did it find it's way to BC? Could this sewing machine be a Canadian, rock and roll historical treasure?

These are questions that I do not know the answers to.  But, I have a sewing machine. It runs, it makes a good stitch, and it was made in the 1940's.......and, anything is possible.......