“I ride an old Paint”

Shortly after she graduated from college I gave Miriam my old sewing machine.  She thought she might do a little sewing:  curtains, pillows, perhaps even a skrit eventually.  She hasn’t been bitten by the sewing bug but she still has the machine and has used it for a few home dec and craft projects.  When there was a little bit of sewing to be done, the old machine and I found an opportunity to become re-acquainted.

The sewing was simple,  a few flannel squares to be hemmed for the baby.  A simple square shade for the master bathroom window.  The machine runs well even though it was a little sluggish and chuggy at first.

A good cleaning and oiling and solved that problem and now she runs like a dream.  It was so nice to take the cover off and oil the parts.  It had been so long….

I had forgotten what it was like to have to oil a completely mechanical machine with moving parts everywhere.  The new machines want a drop of oil in one or two places.  This machine wants you to take the top off, the head plate off, the bottom off, and oil pretty much every moving part.  It was a lovely way to spend  a rainy Saturday.  And speaking of rainy Saturdays, since there is nothing electronic in this sewing machine, we had no problems sewing away while the thunder and lightening roared around us.

I hadn’t really though about the old Kenmore since Miriam moved to Tennessee and I used her to make curtains for Miriam’s first apartment.  That was probably the last time she was oiled, 5 years ago I think.  I had forgotten how reliable she is, how smoothly she sews, how nice to have in a pinch. 

My parents gave her to me about a year after I graduated from College, I think it was 1981, when I had a job and needed work clothes on a pretty tight budget.  At first I used my room-mate Tracy’s machine.  It pretty much only sewed medium weight cotton or wool and balked at everything else.  I mostly made skirts and simple tops back then.  When I got the kenmore I grew more adventurous, trying polyester and silk blouses, pants, and eventually my first jacket. Although I had learned to sew in high school I was not really a willing pupil, not until I was on my own earning my own money and I realized what a boon being able to sew would be for my wardrobe.

Now I have fancier machines, but some part of me still misses the old Kenmore.  This is a machine I can actually take the cover off and undertand.