ThayerRags

Long story. I actually started out using a Singer 538 Stylist when I was learning to mend jeans. It was the seldom used freearm machine that my wife kept near her Singer 401A sewing desk for when she needed a freearm. Since it was already there and ready to sew, that’s what I used. It took flat cams, and I only ever used a zigzag and a multi-zigzag cam. I replaced the hook gears in it after about a year of use, and my use of it kept increasing each year. The gear broke when I was mending a torn crotch. I liked the freearm for mending jeans legs because I’m not as good at “puddle-ing” my work under the needle on a flatbed as my wife is. I’ve only had to open two side seams in 8 years.

I won a Singer 834 Stylist at a sewing machine get-together 3 years later, and noticed that it had the two zz stitches that I use built-in to it, so I switched to the 834. I gave the 538 to my daughter when her 538 broke a gear. She sews crafts for a home-based business.

I haven’t broken a gear in the 834 after using it for 3 years, although I did have to replace a top shaft thrust washer in it. I expect to have a gear break one of these days, but I have new gears plus a second 834 waiting in the wings. A customer had me put new hook shaft gears in it back in 2010, but has never come back to pick it up.

I get a chuckle every time that someone says the Stylist series aren’t any good for mending denim. My wife has used her JC Penney 7057 (Polish Singer Stylist freearm) as a home and family machine since it was new in 1990, and it’s only had one gear replaced in it so far. It takes the same gears as a Singer Stylist. She sewed enough embroidered patches on our leather motorcycle vests between the years of 2000-2005 that there’s little room left for more, and all with the 7057.

With my Singers, I’ve bent and broken probably a box-full (100) of needles in the past 8 years (I use size 11, so sewing across the thick crotch seams takes a toll on needles), but that’s only about twice the cost of what I have in all three machines. I bought the first one for $11 and have gotten the second and third ones for the cost of a few gears. I do most of the jeans mending on my Stylist (she uses a 401A), and this year (though November) between the two of us, we’ve mended 139 pairs of jeans, and reattached 14 belt loops.

CD in Oklahoma