I don’t sew a lot, but I have my mom’s old Singer 306 sewing machine from the 1950’s. I love this machine. It’s big, black, heavy, and makes a dreamy machine hum when it runs. I actually learned to sew on a newer Singer that Mom had in the 1970’s, but it didn’t have this great sound.
When I was at Mom’s house last week, I nearly tripped over something on the stair. It had been sitting there for a long time; it was pretty dusty. I decided it needed rescuing. She said I could take it home.
It’s a little hand-cranked Singer. Mom didn’t know much about it; she said my dad picked it up somewhere. He loved gadgets. Baba passed away in 2001, and I think the Singer may have been sitting on the stair since before that…
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It looks like it uses the same bobbin and bobbin holder as my big machine. It’s missing a needle. But other than that, it seems to be in good working order. I wonder what it was meant to do? Mending? Just a curio? It feels too solid to be a toy, but maybe it was. Time for a google search!
I poked around online and found this interesting site. It seems that my little Singer is a Singer 20 toy sewing machine. It was made sometime between 1926 and 1950, because it has the threading numbers on it (post 1926) and doesn’t look like the “modern” 1950’s models. Looking around some more, I found that the machine came with C-clamp to fasten it to a table. That makes sense; it would be hard to hold it and sew at the same time. Apparently Singer used to market these toy machines to young girls so they’d remember the Singer name when it was time to buy their own real machine. More about the marketing here, if you’re interested.
It looks like the little sister of my big machine, and I’m happy to give it a home.
In knitting news, I’ve finally cast on with the Incense for Passiflora. Can you believe I waited more than a month after the yarn arrived? There’s not much to show for it yet. I’ve gone down 3 needle sizes, and I hope I’m getting gauge. I’ll report back soon…
