Look what has come to live in my studio!
A 1955 Singer Featherweight!
I have been lurking on Craigslist and Ebay for months watching for one of these machines that was in good shape and reasonably priced. I found one, bid and won! Woohoo…..until the machine arrived. The seller on Ebay said it “sewed beautifully.” I took it out of its box and threaded it, put in a bobbin and tried to sew…..nothing. The bobbin make a sickening rubbing sound and I couldn’t bring the thread from the bobbin to the face plate. Uh-oh.
I took her down to my local sewing machine shop and here is where I give a shout out to Marty at The Sewing Machine Shop in Walnut Creek, California. He took the machine apart and completely serviced the machine. He found a badly compressed mass of thread that had collected behind the bobbin casing that made it impossible for the bobbin to work correctly. He cleaned her up, adjusted the bobbin, adjusted the tension, checked the belt, installed a new bulb and…..she is as good as new (for some additional $$$).
This little machine just purrs along. Very quiet and a super straight stitch. I can see why these machines are so popular. She is 15 inches long, 9 1/2 inches tall and weighs 11 pounds. Tiny, but amazing! She came with 15 different attachments. I spent all afternoon researching online what these attachments do…because they didn’t come with any instructions. I have one foot that you can feed a strip of fabric into the foot and it will create a bias tape AND simultaneously sew it onto another fabric. I need to do some experimenting.
If you have one of these machines and have some of these amazing attachments, please comment here about what you have learned and let’s share with other Featherweight owners.
I have two old Singers. One Model 99 and one Featherweight (201-2 from 1948) in the sewing table. I need attachments though! I think they’re lost in my dad’s house. Also, we inadvertantly threw away the screw that adjusts the stitch length so while the machine works, it’s stuck on a really long stitch length right now. 🙁 One of these days I’ll start working with it.
While I was watching Ebay I noticed that occasionally someone will offer a set of attachments (they probably found them at a garage sale). It’s worth watching for them. You might be able to find the screw for the stitch length there too! Since the machine only sews a straight stitch, it relies on the attachments to do the fancy work.