The Singer Sewing Machine

Today is the 175th anniversary of the Singer sewing machine. On August 12, 1851, American inventor Isaac Singer received a U.S. patent for a sewing machine, an invention that would transform the way clothing was made.

My mother had a Singer sewing machine with a floor pedal. She probably got it around the time she married in 1955, when Singers had already been around for more than a century. I learned to sew on her machine when I took ninth-grade Home Economics in 1970. I made many of my clothes on that Singer during high school and continued to use it occasionally in college. It sat on a card table in my bedroom for most of my high school years.

Then, around 1979, when my husband and I moved to Kansas City, I got a Singer of my own. It was much newer than Mother’s, although still a far cry from today’s computerized machines. My machine had cams that produced several different stitches. It made automatic buttonholes, though I never got the hang of those. And I splurged to get a cabinet it fit in. It stayed in that cabinet for the forty-plus years I owned it.

I don’t know what happened to my mother’s old Singer. I don’t remember seeing it when I cleaned out my parents’ house in 2015 after they died. And I gave away my own Singer in 2019 when we moved. By then, I hardly ever sewed. I figured that if I ever decided to take up sewing again, I could always buy a new machine.

So far, I haven’t found the need for another sewing machine. There have been a few times when I wished I had a sewing machine, but not many. And our retirement community has a crafts room with machines available if I ever really need one.

Recently, someone put an old Singer sewing machine on display at my retirement community during an event. It looked just like my mother’s. But unlike my machine or my mother’s, this Singer is still in use. It belongs to one of the quilters who lives here, and she continues to sew with it. It has the same kind of floor pedal as my mother’s machine. If it is from about the same era as my mother’s, it may have been in use for 75 years or more. (After all, my high school days are more than 50 years behind me!)

Seeing that old Singer took me back to my teenage years, when I sat at my mother’s sewing machine learning how to guide fabric under the needle, alter patterns to fit as I went, and enjoy the satisfaction of making something for myself. And one Christmas, I made clothes for my sister’s Barbie doll for her present out of scraps from my mother’s and my projects.

So much of nostalgia works that way. Seeing an ordinary object can bring back memories from long ago. That old Singer in our retirement community reminded me of all those hours I spent creating useful—and sometimes just plain fun—things with fabric.

What have you seen recently that made you nostalgic?