This was a wonderful thing you did for your mom. I loved this thread. You girls are great. I have my grandmothers' Singer Red Eye treadle. Same story, started in 1919, went across country from Baltimore to Oklahoma City. Grandmother started sewing at age eight she was apprenticed to a cotourier in Baltimore. She actually helped sewing hems. By the time she was twelve she was designing and sewing for the fashionable women of Baltimore. She,also, design and made incredible hats to go with the outfits and became so popular they added her name to the front door. At fourteen she was tutored and finished the eighth grade. The store paid for her tutor as they didn't want to lose her presence at the store to take the time out to go to high school. She received her HS diploma at 16. She was a beauty at 16 and designing her own clothes made from leftovers from the store, she became the store's model at private teas. When she met my GF and decided to move to Oklahoma City, it was a blow for the shop and they only lasted another year without her designs. She made all of her clothes her entire life and for my mother and aunt. When I came along in 1938, my mother and dad were doing war work And I went to live with my DGM. She always dressed me like a little princess clear up into my teens. She would keep up with fashion and I had the latest styles before anyone else did. In addition, she sewed for so many wealthy women in Oklahoma City, St. Louis and Little Rock, AR. She continued doing sewing into her late 70's.. All of this on this dear old Red Eye that I learned on and now belongs to me. The stories this machine could tell. It is beat up from moving so many places. I have redone to wooden parts but there are deep gouges in the metal from her buttonhole maker, I guess. The machine sews like a dream. My DGM would never use an electric machine, she said you have no control when you use an electric sewing machine. I treasure this old machine and use as the table for my FW. It's one or the other that I use for everything even tho I have two beautiful Janome's.
I would love to hear stories about other heroic machines.