What is my sewing machine worth?

There really is no answer to this question.  Read on and I will explain why.

No photos in this post.  I'm blogging from a secret bunker under the Antarctic ice.  Or some other place where I don't have access to my photos.

Here's what happens.  A person inherits or otherwise acquires a vintage sewing machine.  They google the make and model.  The find my blog in which I enthuse about it.  They hope it is actually worth something.  They write to me to ask "what is my sewing machine worth?"

I am here today to break your heart.  You're welcome.

The heartbreaking news is that you will be lucky if you can sell it AT ALL.

There is a small group of hardcore vintage sewing machine enthusiasts.  We love the old machines, often to the point of obsession.  Our missionary zeal leads us to sing their praises every time we are around sewing people.  But nobody listens.

I belong to a wonderful quilt guild of about 50 women (Alamance Piecemakers, in Burlington NC).  They all know how I love the old machines.  But they really DON'T want to hear that the old piece of cast iron they inherited from granny is actually a far BETTER machine than the plastic whiz bang wonder that they spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on.  I have finally learned my lesson on that.

I'm not there to make enemies.

Back to the hardcore vintage enthusiast.  We already own dozens of machines. My own collection always hovers around 100.  I'm willing to pay $25 for something I really, really want.  My guild sisters donate others to me all the time as do other people.  I ALWAYS try to talk them into keeping them.  I have never succeeded.  Not once.

I donate some but only if I know exactly where they are going.  Kind of like puppies or kittens.  You don't just hand them out to people who will abuse them.   And they do need regular cleaning and oiling which I can teach someone how to do in 2 minutes flat.  I don't want them to go to the kind of person who thinks that she can pay a service center $100/year to do what she should be spending 2 minutes a month on doing herself.  This also applies if I am selling them.

Yes, I AM a judgmental witch.

I do sell some.  Whether selling or donating I have spent a MINIMUM of 5 hours cleaning, oiling, and checking them out.  It is usually much more than that.  I do it for fun and for the love of the old machines.  I don't donate or sell any machine unless it is in perfect operating condition and as clean as I can get it.

What do you get paid for an hour of your labor?

I sell them to friends (and friends of friends and guild sisters whether they are friends or someone I really don't know very well) for the exact amount I have invested in the machine and any needed
replacement parts.  Plus a bottle of oil and a lint brush.  Notice that I am not charging friends anything for my labor.

I sell others on CraigsList from time to time.  If it is straight stitch only it is well nigh impossible to sell.  If it will zigzag AND is a pretty color I might get $150.  Keep in mind that this is for a completely tested and serviced machine in perfect operating condition.

So.  I probably spent $50 on average for the machine, parts, and supplies.  Say an average of 10 hours of labor on the machine.  At least an hour taking and editing photos for the ad.  Writing the ad.  Time, gas, and depreciation on my car running around finding machines.  If this was a business which it quite obviously is not.  Purchase of specialized tools.  One whole room of my house dedicated to this obsession (just the repair space, not counting all the sewing machines strewn all over the house).

Get the drift?

There is ONE make and model that "normal" sewing people want and are willing to spend a reasonable amount for.  The Singer Featherweight, model 221 or the extremely rare free arm 222.  Reasonable = $300 to $500 for a Featherweight in fully serviced condition, upwards of $1000 for the 222.  Normal = people not obsessed by vintage machines.

There are a few other models that the obsessed are willing to shell out $100 to $200 for.  I'm not going down that rabbit hole in this post, but when I get a question about one of them I give advice about what to say in a CraigsList ad.

So, in answer to the most recent query:  You should definitely keep it.  You will never see a finer machine than that one new in any store at any price.  They just do not make them like that anymore.  Learn to sew if you don't know already.

What's it worth?  Whatever you can get someone to give you.  If anything at all.

Dragon-ing Up a Singer 99 and DIY gold decals

You read that right, fellow VSM addicts, DIY gold decals!  A breakthrough!  Read on down for the whole story....)

You can never have too many Singer 99s or its identical cousin, the Singer 192, aka Spartan.  The smaller size means that they make ideal hand crank machines for children.  And all children NEED a hand crank sewing machine.  Obviously.

My last two machine refurbs were hand cranks for my young friends Nellie and Clinton, who are twins.  You have already seen the princessy pink machine for Nellie in earlier posts.  But it is so adorable I cannot resist showing it to you again.

Clinton opted for a black machine, which was nice for me.  I couldn't just leave it alone however, I wanted to bling it up in a more boy-appropriate way.

While I was pondering ways and means of adding new gold decorations to the bed of this machine I spied some temporary jewelry decals at Walmart.  Amazon has even more, LOTS more.  Figured they were worth a try.  They were cheap ($1/package) and I bought multiples of each of the sets they had.  One of the sets had a dragon.

To apply the jewelry decals to either your skin or the bed of a sewing machine, you cut the motif out then peel the backing off of the adhesive side.  Stick this down.  Then you wet the paper on top, wait for it to soften, and then peel that layer off, leaving the decal revealed on your skin or machine.

As usual when trying something new, it made me nervous and therefore I neglected to take pictures of this part of the process.

The dragon looked fantastic and I clear coated over it.

By the next day the gold was "silvering".  The chemicals of the clear coat were destroying the gold.

Whoops.  By this time I also figured out that I had applied the dragon upside down (standing on its head, so to speak).

no longer totally gold!

Good thing I had bought multiples of each decal set.  I scraped the silvered dragon off of the sewing machine, cleaned up the bed, then applied a new one.

are we having fun yet?

This time I masked off the dragon (simply by cutting a dragon size hole in a piece of scrap paper) and spraying fixatif over the dragon on the sewing machine.

This worked and the dragon stayed a bright shiny gold.

 I also added some other decorative decals to Clinton's machine.

the lightning flash is gold instead of the red it appears here.

When I started this I thought I was very clever and the FIRST person to think of adding temporary jewelry decals to a sewing machine.  Silly me.  Eleanor in Australia casually mentioned this technique in a message to me.  As if everybody already knew this.  Everybody but me that is.

Looks great, no?

NOW FOR THE BIG STORY.  I HAVE BEEN DYING TO TELL YOU ALL ABOUT THIS.

A while back there was chat on the boards about gold decals.  It is not possible to print gold on your home printer.  Extensive investigation (ahem, 15 minutes of googling) led me to discover that there was once such a printer but it is no longer available, if you can still find a used one it will cost around $500, and good luck with getting it serviced when it breaks down.  I have a hate-hate relationship with home printers so I was not tempted to look into this any further.

But my mind kept mulling it over.  And mulling.  And even some stewing.  And here today folks, is a Dragon Poodle EXCLUSIVE:  How to create gold decals for a black sewing machine.  That's right, I solved the problem.  You can send donations through PayPal to my email account in gratitude and respect.  Or not, because I am going to tell you anyhow.

I am really, really pleased, happy, ecstatic and absolutely full of myself over this.  I'll try not to go on and on about it. Really, I will try.

The technique is really, really simple.  The catch:  so far I have only tried it on a black machine.  And I have only tried it with text.

I used a word processing program to create the text for a label for the back pillar of Clinton's machine.  I use Open Office, which is much like Microsoft Office but it's free.

I created a text box.  I used the color white for the text and black for the background of the text box.

The first label in the photo above was printed in "draft" mode, which saves a lot of ink.  When I was happy with it (size, etc) I printed out three in "text" mode on inkjet waterslide decal paper.  Three because three went all the way across the page.   I could cut them off and save the rest of that page to print something else on later on.  Printing just one would have used up the same amount of the (not cheap) waterslide decal paper.

As with all inkjet printed waterslide decals, I then had to spray clear coat over it and let that dry.  I did that three times.  Without the clear coat the ink would melt right off of the decal.

(I have written about waterslide decals before.)

I taped around the paper draft of the decal on the back of the pillar.

Creating a space where the final decal would go.

Then I filled in that gap with gold paint.  See where we are going here? Are you getting excited about this yet?  Well, you should be.  It's absolutely brilliant if I do say so myself.  And I do say so.

After the gold paint was thoroughly dry (the next day) I applied the waterslide decal over the gold.
Remember that the text was in white?  Well, your printer does not spray white ink.  Paper is white, so white is just vacant in an image.  Hence, the gold shows through.  And we have a gold decal on a black machine, all done on a home inkjet printer!

You can see a few lines around the edge where some gold is showing.  I should have masked off a bit more before applying the gold paint.  But my trusty black Sharpie paint pen (not a regular Sharpie) solved that problem nicely.

More clear coat over the whole machine (including the temporary tattoo decals) and it was done.

With a bit of photoshopping you could take any black image and reverse the colors from black on white to white on black and do the same thing.  A line of decorative filigree, for example, or even an image of a dragon.  I plan to try this in the future.

(I use Photoscape, much like the light version of Adobe Photoshop, but free).

You could also experiment with color.  I think it would be hard to get an exact color match, but you could use a coordinating color and have white on teal on a pink machine, for example, which would give you a pink machine with gold designs bordered by teal.  This would not be too hard with a linear design or a label.

Lots of possibilities!  So who wants to experiment, photograph the results, and be the next honored DragonPoodle guest blogger?

Wheeler & Wilson No. 9

Long time readers know that I sometimes use this blog to offer machines for sale.  There is a catch though:  NO SHIPPING.  Ever.  For Any Reason.  No matter how badly you want me to.  Not even if you scold me for posting something you want, but cannot have.  (Yes, this happens, even after these disclaimers).

I'm posting this for a friend in my quilt guild.  She wants it to go to a good home.  Contact me by emailing me directly at cherylwarren27278 dot gmail dot com for the very reasonable price.  We live in the Piedmont region of North Carolina,

The pictures tell the story.  Head only, no treadle.  Straight stitch foot on machine, narrow hemmer and at least two bobbins (there may be another one in the machine, I don't know).

Decals are still present and would PROBABLY clean up a bit.

Looks like all the vital parts are present and correct, but it is untested. It does turn smoothly.  Sold "as is".  And as mentioned, the very reasonable price reflects this.

The usual bed alligatoring.  Because there are no decals on the bed (and never were), the bed finish can be stripped off and re-varnished for a smoother surface.  If you are the kind of person to tackle that.

Bobbin winder present.

So, that's it.  These are legendarily wonderful machines.  If you have only ever treadled Singers, you will be impressed with the superior engineering of a Wheeler & Wilson.  Of course it was more expensive for them to manufacture them, which may have something to do with the fact that eventually they sold out to Singer.  Just conjecture on my part.

Let me know if you are interested.

regards,
Cheryl

This post is for Nellie and Clinton

Dear Nellie and Clinton,

The sewing machines are on their way to you and I will be there a few days later.  Can't wait to see you!

I have asked your mommy NOT to open the boxes before I get there.  I need to put them back together.  But mostly I want to be there to see you when we open them.  I will really enjoy that.

We can sew some tote bags on your new sewing machines if you want to.  So please look at these fabrics and pick out two that you like.  (Your mom and dad can pick some out if they want to make tote bags too).

Surf boards!  You know why I picked this one!

No. 9 is kind of hard to see in this photo, but is is rows of cars.

I will cut the fabrics that you like and get them all ready so we can sew them into tote bags while I am visiting you.

see you soon!

love
Cheryl

Guest Blogger: Eleanor from Down Under

Hello, fellow sewing machine fanatics

Eleanor from Sydney, Australia has been working on her Husqvarna in between dealing with her responsibilities as secretary of a lawn bowls organization.

Yep, I had to look up lawn bowls, which I had never heard of.  The photos look kind of like bocce ball, but since I have never played that sport either I can't really say.  Both seem to involve flinging small wooden balls around.  It is winter in sunny Sydney and any outdoor sport sounds good to me about now.  Sammie and I had to give up our outdoor walks months ago when the Southern heat and humidity kicked in.

She has been sending me pictures of her progress in repainting a Husqvarna, from crinkle green to hammered copper, and I have finally gotten around to putting them together here.  The Husqvarna is shown first.  Then at my request she also sent pictures of a lovely 66 repainted a bright blue, so keep reading until you get to that one.

All photos are by Eleanor and all text in quotes is from her emails to me.

Original color

First coat

"As promised, I got started. Very cold here in Sydney (my last excuse to you was that it was too hot!), so, I've rugged up in my thermals and sitting out on my back verandah putting the first coat on. It looks like a dog's breakfast! As you can see, I changed my mind again on colour and have gone the hammered copper route. I think this will suit the machine and if I'm able to work out how to do water slide decals, they'll be black. I've found the font type and the water slide printing paper on eBay, haven't purchased yet. "

"So I got the brushes out again and worked on my bits while the mood struck. The tin says one coat should be sufficient on previously painted metal in sound condition. I guess they hadn't met Godzilla finish, or my need to work quickly around fiddly bits."

Treadle flywheel and pitman

Second coat

"Just sending you some more pics to show that I haven't gone to sleep on you again with it. I've put another coat on today and it is starting to look a whole lot better. I'm very happy now with my colour choice.. It's my first experience with a wooden pitman, so it would be nice to restore it back in its own treadle."

Third coat

"I put another coat on today to patch the bits of green that were still persistently showing through. I think I'm nearly there. I must now get the water slide decal paper for our laser printer and start searching for some images."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

and if you thought all that was fun, just LOOK at the bright blue Singer 66 she repainted.

 "This machine was picked up out of a ditch by my friend's son and sat in her yard for twelve months or so before coming my way. It took me about three months of occasional fiddling to eventually get it turning over. The Lotus decal is the most common 66 pattern seen in Australia and I have three other lovely ones, so felt no guilt in repainting this one."

I sure wish the Lotus decal was that common here in the US.  Red Eye is our common pattern.  Also lovely but I particularly like the Lotus.

"This is the one with the Indian crank, which you now know all about and I use it a lot."


She is referring to a discussion of hand cranks from India, available in Australia but not here in the US.  Notice the two holes in the mounting part.  One hole is for Singers the other is for another brand--I think it was Pfaff but don't quote me on that.  Notice the nice wooden knob.  Notice the metal ring covering the gear (as opposed to the plastic one on the Chinese hand cranks).  Notice the all around better look--no rough casting here.

WHY CAN'T WE HAVE THESE HERE?  Someone on the board investigated and found it would be cost prohibitive to import them from Australia.  But they are from India.  Why are our suppliers not importing the Indian version?  I will have to do some nudging on this.  

"I had been following your blog and missewsitall and thought "what have I got to lose?" My freehand calligraphy could be better, but I don't really mind it"

"The little arrow markings were personal fake tattoos and worked well. I gave it a spray of clear coat too."   

Aha, I thought I was the only one who had thought of using the fake tattoos.  You will see this again soon on the machine I have decorated for 6 year old Clinton.

Lovely work!  Thanks, Eleanor.  Looking forward to seeing the finished version of the Husqvarna too.