A blanket apology to the Singer owners and their machines... [View all]

Confession: I learned to sew on a Singer, and I hated that machine. It was noisy, skippy and cantankerous, even immediately after a trip to the shop. It's my mother's machine, and she adores it in spite of - or maybe because of - all of its snarling ways. It was the only machine I knew, and she told me it was normal (Mom's definitions of normal are... definitely unique to her experiences. To say she's an unreliable narrator is an understatement, and the machine was a minor example.). If I hadn't loved fabric and fashion, I probably would have never sewed anything ever again.

In high school and college, I sewed on the industrials in the costume labs and Brother/Janome/Babylock, all of which I am fond of. I just didn't understand the Singer lovers who extolled the smoothness and quiet function of their machines. I remembered that cabinet beast, and using a dental floss container to hold the bobbin on the winder, and picking thread out of every cranny after it ate half a bobbin. I've done troubleshooting on other people's inherited late 60s-80s Singers, and briefly had a few 70s-early 90's models. I have never found them worth the time. I love my Japanese robots, that will sew anything and decorate it with three files and four button pushes.

But. For reasons, I want an off-grid sewing machine. Power outages/conservation are part of it, being able to go out on the balcony and sew in the sun is part of it, travel convenience is part of it. (Sewing gatherings often don't have enough outlets.) So I want a hand-crank, and am in the process of building one out of a blown motor 99. Which has led to reading a lot about the old Singers, and finally putting a model number to Mother's beast. It's a 306, an early zig-zag home model that used cams to do everything. It has a lot of negatives -- it wanted special needles (which Mother didn't change often, probably because they were expensive and rare) and bobbins... and both the needles and bobbins were fractionally different from standard, so universals would appear to fit, but make the machine run like hell. I'm pretty sure that was exactly what was happening. That doesn't excuse her bobbin winder -- the bobbin lock nub is just worn down and any replacement parts are equally worn.

I must apologize. I have been unfairly labeling Singers as junk with good marketing for all of my life, because I've been exposed to Singer's attempt to force the Walled Garden model for accessories, and the early plastic Singers at the end of their useful lives. That 306 and those now elderly plastic gear machines are not representative of the legacy Singer built and earned. That 99 is a gorgeous piece of industrial design.

Mea culpa.

But seriously... if you ever encounter a 306, run to a safe distance and throw holy water on it. Stake it with holly and bury it at the crossroads during the full moon. It will lie to you and savage you just because it can.