Saturday, August 1, 2009

Aunt Josephine's Spartan Sewing Machine


Hi Mary and Jeni,
I spent several hours last night and today spiffing up the Spartan Sewing Machine that Cousin Mike bequeathed to me. It had been Aunt Josie's and I was thrilled to finally have a 'family' machine. Our side of the family is sadly lacking in sewing heritage.

It was sort of disconcerting to learn from Mike that Josie also disliked to sew, and hated the Spartan. Evidently Jim, her husband, sometime in the 50's decided that she had to modernize and get rid of her treadle. As a move towards upgrading her sewing he dumped the treadle and got her one of the cheapest sewing machines available at the time. Drat the man. Anyway Josie could sew on the treadle but seemed to believe the Spartan was the spawn of Satan and it went too fast, and I hope Mike will correct me if I exaggerate too much, but, it was never loved.

From it's condition I would say something loved it alot but that was probably a result of living in Mike's garage for several years. Jim had to take this outside
and remove these contents before I could start cleaning.
Anyway it is now clean and shiny and runs like a champ and I will try to make up for its sad earlier life. I will start by proudly taking it to my quilt club meeting this coming Thursday for Show and Tell.
Love,
Nancy

4 comments:

  1. Hi Nancy, et al. Well, you sort of got the story right. Mom never really did like to sew very much although she did from time to time. I think she found it boring, and as a result had accidents like sewing the leg of a pair of slacks shut, stuff like that.

    As for the Spartan, that was actually her sewing machine, which my Dad replaced, as a gift, with a fancy-shmancy zig-zag super-deluxe, which Mom truly loathed. She almost immediately sewed through the power-cord and that was that. She went back to the Spartan, but she really wanted a treadle because they were slow. When my Aunt Myrtle died, Mom snagged her old treadle machine and never touched the Spartan, or any other electric machine again.

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  2. I love hearing old stories like that. But it begs the question: where's Aunt Myrtle's machine?

    Gee, Mike, you had an Aunt Myrt, and an Aunt Gert.

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  3. I wonder if he has an Uncle Bert?
    N.

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  4. Aunt Myrt's treadle is now with JoAnn. She wanted it after Mom died.

    Sadly, there's no Uncle Bert on either side of the family. The closest we have is a shoe-string relative on the McKay side, long dead, with the last name Mertz.

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