Singer Featherweights are lightweight, easily portable sewing machines that are popular for quilters to take to quilt classes. I’ve had one since the early 1990s and it is my favorite machine of all times. It must be handled gently, oiled regularly, and have lint removed often, or there will be problems. Other than that, it hums along. Mine has a special (new) foot that has a 1/8″ seam allowance on the left side, and a 1/4″ seam allowance on the other side, making it perfect for piecing miniature quilts.
In recent years, a company has manufactured sewing machine oil with a long nozzle, perfect for reaching those hard to reach spots, when oiling the machine. Unfortunately, the bottle we had was barely used, when it developed a leak. The plastic housing was not durable enough. This week, at JoAnn Fabrics, we bought a similar contraption and have high hopes that it will work as well, and perhaps, last longer.
Somewhere in my notebooks, those ever-present volumes of collected tidbits, I printed out a paper from the Internet that tells how to determine the age of a Singer featherweight 221. If I recall correctly, mine was made in 1948. They are a mid-20th century phenomenon. The only (slight) drawback is that one needs to have the needle down and in the fabric before beginning to sew a line of stitches. It’s a matter of habit.
A lot of times, the old Black cases, used originally to house the machine when not in use, smells very bad. Some people have had good luck by putting a bar of Irish Spring soap inside the case and closing it for a month or so. In my case, I’ve saved the case, of course, but I went to Walmart and purchased a much bigger case that is large enough to hold bobbins, the electrical parts of the machine (foot pedal, etc.), and the sewing machine manual.
Nancy Johnson-Srebo from Pennsylvania, someone from whom I took a class on piecing miniatures when I was first getting started with doing that, wrote a book that contains all the information you would ever want or need to know about featherweights. She has collected a number of the machines herself, and is an expert at getting them to work properly. I could not find this book on amazon, which is a shame, as it is a good reference.
So that is the scoop on this dreary, cold, and rainy New England day. The Lilac leaves are opening, and there is snow on the ground. Go figure. Time to oil my machine and make it Purr again.
Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications – old things
Tags: Nancy Srebo Johnson, Singer featherweight sewing machines
