Ah here we go.....
The first machine that I remember was an old black Singer. Portable type with the old knee crank. That is the one that I learned to sew on.Before we learned to sew, our mother made a lot of our clothes. I also remember her making some of my Halloween costumes, They were at times very fancy to say the least.
Somewhere in my teens my mother went out and bought a Bernina in a cabinet. That was in retaliation to my dad spending around a grand on wood working tools from a guy he worked with.
One of her comments was that if he could spend that much, so could she. The Bernina was green and yellow to my memory and had the built in stitches. I used to push both those machines fast.
Supposedly one of the machines was given to my younger sister and the other was sold in a yard sale. I was told that the Bernina was the one sold and that My mother regretted doing that. One of my sisters later helped her get another machine but she did not use it much.
I remember making all my own clothes from grade school up, mainly because I refused to wear hand me downs.(That unto itself is another story) I was always a year or so ahead of the girls in home ec . I remember spending one summer with one of my sisters when she lived near Chicago making my wardrobe for the following school year. I think I wore some of those clothes even after I graduated. The ensemble was basically a mix and match so that I could make several outfits out of a few pieces.
I think that I frustrated some of the girls in my home ec class because I was more advanced than they were and was allowed to do more on my own with the sewing machines.
As for cooking I think I hated that part because it bored me.
In 1978 or 79 my first husband bought me the Singer 538. That was because I wanted a sewing machine with cams for the decorative stitches. I still have that machine and now it needs another new gear.
Some of the machines that we have acquired over the last year or so I have to blame on memories of my childhood friends and the machines they had that fascinated me then and still do to this day.
The rest of them are due to Joe's love of machinery, and making them work again.
Elaine