Last month I shared the story behind my very first sewing machine, well, my mom’s really. It was the first brand-new piece of furniture my parents ever owned, and the machine I made my first quilt on at age seven.
This month I want to introduce you to another sewing machine that holds a place in my heart. It came to me years later, from a woman who shaped the kind of sewer, and the kind of businesswoman I became.
Aunt Lil Was the Woman Who Could Make Anything
Aunt Lil was my husband’s aunt. I first met her after moving to Atlanta in 1993, and I was in awe. She made her own drapes, reupholstered her own furniture, and sewed for everyone she loved. She could make anything, and she was completely unbothered by what she didn’t know how to do because she’d just figure it out.
At that time, I hadn’t yet found my way into this industry. But as the years went on and I did, our relationship deepened around a shared language. We’d talk for hours about sewing, about machines, about the craft of it. She was one of the people who encouraged and nurtured the work I was building, and I didn’t take that for granted.
A Machine Worth Standing In Line For
Her Singer was something special. When this model came out in the 1960s, it was coveted. Singer had built something that performed like an industrial machine but was designed for the home, and people knew it. Aunt Lil and her mother stood in line together to be among the first to own one.
Still Sewing in Her Nineties
When Aunt Lil moved to a nursing home in her final years, she brought the machine with her. She used it to turn old skirts into pillows and sold them to the neighboring ladies for twenty dollars each. In her nineties. Still creating.
During one of our visits she told me no one in the family wanted the machine. I told her I did. She called every family member to confirm it, then called me back and said it was going in her will with my name on it. After she passed, her son drove it down to me from Tennessee.
Refurbished, Renamed, and Still Running
I sent it to a company called Still Stitching, gave them some creative freedom, and what came back was beyond what I imagined. Two-toned pink (obviously) with hand-painted lilies, and across the front it read “Lovingly Preserved in Memory of Aunt Lil.”
It’s still a solid, capable machine, and it’s the one I reach for when I know a job is going to need onsite sewing. It makes the trip with me. Every single time I use it, I think of her.
Twenty years in, the machines that matter most are still the first ones. And the women behind them.
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The Machines Behind the Work: First Stitches
