Zigzaggers

Singer Featherweight Model 221-1

by Katie, a graduate student in Irvine, California, who keeps a personal blog here

Love it, hate it, or something in between? Love it! It's so small and pretty and uncomplicated.

When did you buy this sewing machine? My mom bought it somewhere in early 2005.

When was it manufactured? Not sure, but the latest copyright date on the instruction manual is 1950. However, the instruction manual didn't actually come with the machine, so the date could be off.

Where did you buy it? My mom bought it at an antique shop somewhere in San Diego.

How much did you pay for it? I think she paid about $600. Not sure if that includes the tune up she got after she bought it.

How many projects have you done on this machine? Probably around 30-ish. I'm not a real big sewer, plus I'm in graduate school.

Describe the kind of work you've done with it. Mostly patchwork and quilting, and a few simple sewing projects. I've put together a lot of quilt tops, and have actually quilted a bunch of placemats. Also, I've made some simple bags and clothing items, including a denim skirt. Apparently, Featherweights are highly prized within the quilting community because they are portable and thus ideal for communal quilting. My mom is a quilter, which is why she picked up the machine when she found it.

What do you like and what do you hate about it?

Like:
-- It's small and light and portable and comes with a carrying case. It requires very little setup: Just plug it in and thread the needle.
-- It comes with a bunch of crazy looking attachments for hems and edgings, as well as a gatherer and a ruffler. I've only used one of them, ever, to make a narrow hem, but it's nice to know they're all there.
-- Since Featherweights are so popular among quilters, you can find additional parts for them and lots of information about them on the internet. One of my local quilt stores has a whole section of stuff for Featherweights, and I was able to get a foot for it to do a quarter inch seam (standard in quilting).

Dislike:
-- **It only does a straight stitch** This is absolutely NOT the machine for you if you need to do a lot else.  You can control the length of the stitch and go forward or backward, but that's it. It's not a problem for me since I mostly only quilt, but I have had to drag out my mom's old Pfaff to do a zigzag stitch on bindings.   However, I put the Pfaff back after that because I really enjoy the simplicity of my tiny Singer.
-- There's a light on the machine, but it gets hot really quickly and it's located near where my hand is when I'm sewing, so I can't even use it.
-- The motor is old and gets tired after a lot of sewing, so you can't go really fast for a long time.
-- The sewing space is sort of small, which makes it hard to sew in the middle of something large (though it's not really that much smaller than on a normal sized machine).

All told, this is a great machine for simple sewing.  Probably good for learners, too, because it doesn't have anything you could accidentally press to screw everything up. 

New sewing machines

My original intent with this site was to post reviews of vintage machines so that beginners could read about some of the old stuff that's available in the used market. I figured I'd basically cover any machine that's been around long enough that a few might be showing up on eBay or Craigslist -- in other words, my criteria were not strict.

And while most of the sewing machines that are included here fit easily into that category, I've run a few reviews of machines that seem a little too modern (too plasticky white! not that there's anything wrong with that), but which I thought would, indeed, be good for used-machine shoppers to know about.

Because I want the main body of the blog to stay focused on old sewing machines, in all their candy-colored, quirkily designed, mechanical glory, I've decided to create a separate blog for reviews of machines that are ten or fewer years old. These are some great machines, and their owners really love them -- I think they're all good candidates for used purchases... they're just not vintage, so I'm separating them.

As I add more of these types of reviews (and please get in touch with me if you'd like to review a machine in either the vintage or new category!), I'll update this post, so anybody checking the categories here at Zigzaggers will be led to the new sewing machines over on their other site, New Zigzaggers.

The newest of the new sewing machine reviews comes from Lisa Lam, a really fun handbag designer with a funny, interesting, helpful blog. She uses a 6-year-old computerized Janome 3500 (pictured above with Lisa's cutest shoes) that sounds like a great, dependable modern machine.

Here's a list of the reviews that can be found on New Zigzaggers:

Janome 3500
Brother LS-1217
Singer 8280

Find them all at this link: New Zigzaggers

A word from the editor

Hi there -- I want to interrupt the sewing machine reviews briefly to make a few personal comments. When I started thinking about this site, I knew it would only become an interesting, useful resource with the help of strangers, and I didn't know whether strangers would have any reason to participate. But they did, and they continue to, and I want to thank them all!

I started by approaching crafty bloggers, and when Melissa from tinyhappy responded to me and reviewed her borrowed Bernina Record 730, I was thrilled and amazed. Melissa's blog is lovely, the gorgeous totes, dresses, and baby shoes she sews are beautiful, and to have her be the first guest reviewer really made me think this site might work out. Then Melissa Fehr, a blogger and active poster on Pattern Review who sews at an incredibly prolific rate, reviewed her store-brand 80s machine, and not long after that, my forays into the community of sewing machine collectors and repairers bore fruit and the brilliant McKenna Linn sent me a review of her beautiful Elna Grasshopper.

I'm so grateful to them and to the ten other people who've since contributed. The site needs more, more, more, so I hope that anybody who's thinking of reviewing an older sewing machine will email me and do it -- the more machines we collect on here, the more helpful and beautiful (I love the way these machines look!) the site will be.

I've come across a few things lately that I want to share:

First, on the topic of shopping for used machines, I received an email from Belinda describing how she'd come across a Janome 610 gratis by posting a wanted notice on Freecycle. Brilliant. She tells the story on her blog, here.

Second, another very talented sewing-and-crafting person, Heather Bailey, posted a blurb about her experiences with different sewing machines on her blog, here. Although she uses a new computerized Bernina as her main machine, she has some insightful comments about how inadequate sewing machines get lots of people off on the wrong foot when they're learning. She talks a bit about her older Viking and a Bernina 840, too.

I've been getting some emails from people who want to find out more about their old sewing machines, so I wanted to make a quick mention of the fact that I believe most of the big companies will tell you when and where your vintage find was made. I emailed White with just the model number of my new used machine, and a customer service rep wrote back promptly with the year of manufacture.

What's more, loads of manuals are available online -- there's one site, Sew USA, that has free threading diagrams and sells manuals for about $10.

One more useful reference site is Ed Lamoureux's blog -- he doesn't update it much, but he put up a great post (here) a couple of years ago about sewing machine feet that breaks down the low-shank/high-shank difference and offers tips for finding new attachments for various machines.

Please contribute more good sewing machine reference links in the comments section!

And last, but certainly not least, but also not at all sewing related, I have to share a link to a very funny comic strip, Monty, which recently won the National Cartoonists Society division award for best newspaper strip of the year. Jim Meddick, the creator, also happens to be my husband...