I was wondering, exactly what is a feather weight? Is it just a plain machine used for straight stitch and especially for piecing? I worked in a factory once where I sewed on labels in the neck of shirts. The machine was tiny but very fast. You could zip around those 1x2 inch labels very fast. I wish I had one of them. of course you had to sew in a lot of labels in a day to make minium wages.