Candace

Trust me Miriam, they stink at FMQing. Of course not all drop in bobbins are bad, but horizontals are preferred by many quilters. I really don't understand your comments about the 301 bobbins as I have zero problems with any of my 301's and they are a breeze to repair. I'd take a 301 over a 400 or 500 series machine any day.

irishrose

I have one I bought for $5 so I'd have a SS machine to leave at another place I sew. The tension doesn't stay in sync, but is easily fixed. I just don't like to have to keep an eye on it. I am going to give it a better cleaning and if this continues, the machine will be sold. It does not FMQ. I tried and had to take it all out and redo it at home on the 301. The bobbin does hold more thread than the 301, but that's the only advantage.

It'd certainly be worth the price of a cup of coffee to have a nice SS machine.

Rodney

I'd get it at that money just because it's a neat looking machine. I haven't tried free motion quilting with any of our machines. So far 3 of the 4 we own are class 66 machines. The oddball is a White Rotary with a vertical bobbin. I should put a test sandwich together and give it a try.
Rodney

Wintersewer

It's just a straight stitch machine, so has a limited usefulness, IMHO. Do you need one? I'd rather put my time into one that at least does ZZ, and takes standard low shank feet, that way I have at least a slight chance that someone might actually pay money for it. There is no market for old machines around here and I usually end up giving them away. Folks who list old machines on CL for hundreds are dreaming. The situation may be different in other areas.

mo-rie

I taught for several years with these machines in my classroom. They do a very nice straight stitch. I was able to buy a so-so one at GW for $25 last spring. I forgot how much I like this one. My current students like using it as its speed is easy to control. Ironically, when we sold these off to replace with updated models, they went for $25 and now I own one again for the same price. I like sewing with it as much as my 301's IMHO. It took me a couple of hours to clean it up and oil but she purrs along now!

miriam

Last time I looked about 98% of the time I sew straight stitch. There are lots of times it is nice to have an extra machine set up for a task. An extra machine can be set up to just do one color thread, just do button holes with a button holer or just use a bigger needle and heavy thread - if you are going to do that you can set the tension for the heavy thread. You could use that machine and set another machine up just to do zig zag or some other stitch - it is easy to just go back and forth from one machine to the other. There are lots of ways to finish seams other than zig zag. http://sewclassic.blogspot.com/2013/...er-french.html

ThayerRags

I have my Grandmother’s 1959 Singer 404, and I’ve made some canvas projects on it, including a small tote bag with a pocket in it. I made it the winter of 2006 when we were first in the shop and needed a bag to carry our business books to and from the shop. It’s just big enough to hold a couple of bank bags, check books, the daily cash register papers, and a spiral order notebook. We’re still using it (it’s setting right here beside me), although the handles are getting tattered from hanging it every day on a coat hook in the back of the shop.

I made a couple of very large canvas cotton harvest sacks for the local museum with it. They have a cotton program each Fall for school kids, that includes the kids picking their own cotton by hand, taking it to the scales, and then on to the miniature cotton gin. The kids get to take a small amount of ginned cotton home that they picked from the plant themselves.

The 404 handled those jobs just fine. I seldom use a zigzag except when mending jeans, and then I use a multi-zigzag machine, but nearly everything else I sew is with a straight stitch machine.

CD in Oklahoma

Sheluma

You do mean large! I had no idea that a bag like this was used for harvesting cotton. Thanks for the pictures.

miriam

I was shocked at the size, too.

ThayerRags

Yes, they’re very large! I patterned my design after measuring a few of the vintage adult bags that the museum has for display only, so the authentic bags were actually made that big. Of course, many farm wives made their own, so there were lots of designs and sizes. Stores sold them too, but most of those differed in design from each other’s brand. There were also smaller bags that were made for children, but the museum decided to have me make the new ones adult-size because they’re showing the kids how adults used to do things. It’s seldom that the kids in the school program get much more cotton picked than could fit in a small laundry basket, and to tell you the truth, it’s a hoot to watch the kids dragging the large bags up and down the rows with hardly a bulge in the end of the bag. The kids can see how much picking it would require to fill those bags!

Edited to add: and how HEAVY those bags must have gotten!

We have a couple of authentic ones in our shop that were used on a farm just west of town. Cotton sacks pop up at auctions every once in a while, usually still in good shape. (The farmers took good care of them so that they didn’t have to replace them any more than they had to.) Ours have been mended several times, so that was interesting to me to see how they did their mending “back in the day”.

CD in Oklahoma