Elsie 221 Featherweight

Since posting about my new (to me) old vintage machine, and receiving some email questions about her, I realized I needed to write a whole post about this lovely machine.

Elsie 221

It has been sitting used for many years. You can see that there is residue from a piece of tape that was stuck on the machine, likely as a seam allowance guide. Even after a lot of elbow grease, I was unable to get it all off, but it's better than it was.

Vintage Singer Needles

I was gifted this machine by someone I didn't know very well, but she knew I was a quilter and wanted to give her special sewing machine to me. I know the value of this gift and was reluctant to accept it for a while. It had been sitting in her closet for a long time, and then it sat in my closet for a long time, while I slowly came around to accepting this generous gift. Elsie joins my sewing machine collection (otherwise known as "the herd") as machine #17 - you can read about the others here.

Using the Singer Featherweight webpage on dating machines, I discovered that this machine with serial number EG642139 was born on May 16, 1951 which makes her 67 years old!



One of the very special things about this machine is because she was born in 1951, which was Singer's centennial year, it has a special badge that says "A century of sewing service" on the blue oval edge of the badge.

wrong position

After dismantling, cleaning, oiling and checking all the working parts, I couldn't get it sewing properly. But I had forgotten one important feature of Featherweight machines. 
Okay... see how the "positioning finger" is at the 9 o'clock position? 

right position

It must be at the 12 o'clock position. After removing the faceplate and cleaning the years of gunk under there, I had not repositioned it correctly. 
That problem had me stumped for a while, but once I solved that problem, it sewed perfectly. The tension was exact and she may now be my new favourite machine!

This is the box of accessories that came with her. Only one of these bobbins is for the 221 machine (the top left one) so I'm not sure what machine the other bobbins are for.


And sew... as soon as I'm done work, I'll be in the sewing room with Elsie to start sewing the last step of Good Fortune. Bonnie surprised the quilting world with posting the mystery design reveal this morning. Can't wait to put some blocks together to see how my version of the quilt will look!