I wash mine with regular Dawn dish detergent and hang it out in our very intense sunshine to dry.
When I was picking up a few things in a small store that has been proactive about limiting numbers of people inside and so forth, one customer told the cashier she only wears her mask in that store. She “heard that masks cause bacterial infections”. The cashier asked her if the people who said that WASHED their masks after wearing them? Customer did not know, just repeated the claim. I bet she was quoting one of our fine county commissioners who had gone on record as saying masks were ridiculous, cause bacterial infections, blahblahblah. This guy also verbally attacked the medical director and Tweeted garbage about him.
Sounds like he is taking too many cues from the top know-nothing.
Paisley, you say? I have russet paisley worthy of a royal gamekeeper’s ascot (or a prince’s boxer shorts). Also game fish and gold-flecked storm clouds.
Handsome vintage machine, Wolf. I have a fondness for the classics as well. Just picked up this 1953 White (the original ZigZag) from a retired local guy who rebuilds them as a hobby. The other two are a 1904 Singer Model 66 (Lotus) and the one I have made most of the masks on. a 1909 Singer Model 15 (Sphinx).
willowleaf - I’m not even in the same league as you for nice old sewing machines. Yours are like works of art! I got mine used from a sewing machine store in Troy, NY about 40 years ago. I asked them for something that could punch through heavy materials like canvas and sailcloth.
The newer machines are no match for our older ones. Like yours, mine can practically stitch through a 2 by 4. I have installed zippers in leather jackets and stitched everything from bridesmaids dresses to folding kayak skins to heavy canvas yurt covers on the treadles. Neither has ever skipped a stitch or stalled. As long as I keep cranking my feet, it will keep on sewing. And I love being able to control it slowly, stitch by stitch. My mom had passed the Model 15 (“Cleopatra”) along to me – she was an expert seamstress who sewed most of the family clothes, slipcovers for our furniture and costumes for local theater groups – but she would still come over to my house to use it for making buttonholes and doing some top-stitching because she said none of the fancy electrics that she collected after giving me the treadle did as nicely in those jobs. Besides the buttonholer cam sets I have pleating, ruffling, zigzag and hemming attachments for the treadles, all found for a few dollars at thrift stores and yard sales. I got the Model 66 (“Nefertiti”) in the gorgeous highly carved tiger oak cabinet, for $90 at the estate sale of a woman who had been a corsettiere. The drawers still held her cloth measuring tape, vintage packages of hand needles and hooks and eyes and a tiny order book with notations on her customers.
The durability of the older models was proven during the past couple of months while I was part of a Facebook group of men and women with sewing ability who were generating large batches of face masks for critical workers. We shared our experiences in posts and an unfortunate number of people using modern electric/electronic sewing machines reported terrible problems with tension and the feed mechanisms. Several had their machines break down completely after hours and days of continuous use. The only thing I had to do was oil mine (something I do regularly anyway) and shorten the leather drive belt on the 1909. I can still easily get parts for the elderly treadles though, other than belts, they have never needed anything. It would take centuries, maybe even millennia, to wear out the steel gears and cams in a vintage mechanical device like these. And I get good exercise pumping the treadle.
It breaks my heart to see fine old treadles rusting in barns and basements, or the cabinets gutted of their mechanisms to turn into side tables. Kept intact, dry and oiled, these are wonderful tools. And they have a great history – they not only freed millions of women from hours of labor involved in hand-stitching linens and clothing for their families, but enabled them to earn a living by producing goods efficiently to sell to others. To this day, owning and knowing how to use a mechanical sewing machine means that a man or woman can support their family, even in an underdeveloped country without access to electricity.
Vintage machines are still plentiful on Craigslist and other selling sites, but most people are unrealistic in their prices for them. Yes, they do have intrinsic value for those who sew, but we “sewists” are still in the minority of the population (though the growing popularity of Cosplay has launched a new surge in sewing amongst younger people and men). But hundreds of millions of sewing machines have been produced over the past 150 years and by the first half of the 20th century nearly every household in America possessed one. I have to laugh when I see an ad post for a Singer treadle categorized by the poster as “rare antique” with a $600 price tag (usually one with rust, a water damaged cabinet and missing parts.) I want to say “not rare, son, there is probably one in the basement of every house on your block.” There are some collectors (almost all men and many of them don’t even sew) of the more rare or more perfectly intact models, but since they are too heavy to ship, most sellers are not going to be within driving distance of a buyer who would even want an old machine.
The machine I learned to sew on was a wonderful Singer treadle, can’t tell you what model. I used that for some of my school clothes each year through 10th grade anyway. We had some alternate feet but I never learned to use them, punted with hand stitching for stuff like hems or close detail.
I don’t recall that my sister ever learned to do it, at least in a useful way. She was five years in school behind me and missed the moment for a variety of reasons.
My sister (3 years my junior) never really caught on like I did to sewing either. She tried learning later in high school (I started when I was 9, with doll clothes).
But I finally concluded that you need to start really young, before you have developed a self-critical eye and can still be impressed with your neophyte productions. It takes a while to develop skill in sewing, especially for clothing. My sister just got so frustrated with how crappy her first projects turned out for all the time and effort she expended, that she gave up.
I started making my own clothing in 6th grade and my first outputs were a simple short sleeved pullover blouse and a gathered skirt (an Egyptian papyrus print, since I was mad about Archaeology at that age.) I proudly wore them to school. Many years later, my mom revealed that she had saved those two items long after I outgrew them and she offered them back to me for sentiment’s sake. When I saw how ill-sewn they were, especially the skewed seams and wavering topstitching on the blouse, I was horrified that I had worn the sad-looking things in public. “But you were so proud of them” Mom said.
Fortunately, by the time I developed that hypercritical eye, I was an expert seamstress. We didn’t have much money when I was kid, in fact my entire childhood since our mom did not get her degree and go back to work until after I left high school so she could supplement my Dad’s meager college prof salary. I wanted to look good so I would copy the popular styles of pricey sportswear and dresses that my classmates could afford at the department store, using remnants of fabric bought at Woolworth’s or Grant’s (remember dime stores?) for 39 or 59 cents per yard. To some extent I was bribing myself to go to school – I hated my high school but if I had something new to wear on Monday morning I could motivate myself to get up at 6:00 AM for the 45 minute dismal bus ride. So I was usually sewing something (on the treadle) on any given Sunday evening.
I even made money to supplement my tiny allowance and babysitting income by sewing and selling the mandated white aprons to the other girls in the obligatory cooking and housekeeping classes (forced upon female students in the 60’s while boys got to take shop.)
Later, in the early “hippie” years of the late 60’s, I made a little money customizing people’s straight leg jeans into bell bottoms with triangular inserts or by sewing embroidered trim and fringe along the side seams. I moved around a lot during my college years and 20’s – didn’t have much furniture (since I did not own a car until i was 27 I slept on a roll-up foam mattress and kept my clothing and books in wicker baskets) but I would always manage to borrow a vehicle or beg a favor to get that heavy cast iron treadle and its steel machine relocated with me.
In my late 20’s I managed a wilderness sports and kayaking outfitter and we sold the outdoor clothing and gear sewing kits that were popular in that era. I found a pristine “red eye” Singer treadle with lovely decals in a thrift shop and persuaded the shop owners to buy it for $35 and set it up in the “lounge” area of the store, where we did various seminars. I would teach beginner sewing classes for our customers on that machine and do demos of how easy it was to make a rain jacket or duffel bag. It was fun to see big burly “mountain man” guys get all excited about sewing their own daypack or down vest when they would bring in the finished product to show off.
I’ll make a token effort to bring this back to a watercraft-related topic by noting that in the days of sail, big burly sailors, who could probably crush a mountain man like a bug, hand-sewed and embroidered all of their own clothes during the long voyages.
My high school boyfriend (a burly sailor complete with a single gold hoop earring) raced OK Dinghys. To support his hobby and yacht club fees, he had a heavy duty sewing machine and made his own sails and sold custom custom sails and bimini covers to other boat owners. He also made some of his own clothes. Pic below of the two of us at 17 in our finest hippie threads – I sewed my day-glo minidress and he stitched the brown and orange houndstooth vest. He told me his Grand-dad had made the orange satin tie with the sequined horsehead,
Keeping to the martime theme: It was that sailor beau who introduced me to boating (summer camp banging around a pond in dented Grumman canoes didn’t really count). The first boat I owned myself was a Sea Snark, kind of a discount store 11’ version of the 13’ OK Dinghy that he raced. That Snark was great fun for solo and tandem sailing and so light (made of styrofoam) that I could easily load it on the cheap ski rack on my tiny Datsun B210. The rolled up sail and mast fit in the ski clips and the plywood centerboard and rudder went in the trunk.
OK Dinghy photo and Snark specs below for reference, though I had an older all foam Snark that only weighed about 25 pounds, a glorified disposable picnic ice chest. It was so light the only way to handle it in a good breeze was to slop several gallons of water into the hull for ballast:
