lovelyl

I did this for my quilt guild a couple of years ago and they seemed to enjoy it. After a brief slide show on the history of the sewing machine and introducing the vintage machines we displayed, we let everyone "play" with the vintage machines we brought in. We put a stack of scrap fabric by each machine and made sure each was threaded properly so they could stitch away. The machines that drew most attention were a treadle machine (some of the younger members had never had a chance to sew on a treadle), a hand crank machine, and, of course, the Featherweight. The ladies shared a lot of memories of their ancestor's machines and the machines they learned to sew on as a child. Some of the ladies were comparing the quality of the stitches of each machine, etc. One younger member even said she could tell the stitches on the vintage machines were straighter than those on her modern machine. She said she always wondered why people would say the Featherweight made such a nice, straight stitch and she was excited to actually see what that meant. Everyone seemed to have a good time.