Sewing Machine Poll Questions
What do you primarily use your sewing machine for?
Greetings everybody,
Substack has a feature that allows me to create poll questions for subscribers of The Sewing Machine Newsletter, so I thought it would be fun to test this feature out. We now have readers from all 50 states and 42 countries. If we get good participation, it will be interesting to see what people from all around the world use their sewing machines for.
At some point, I will likely do a podcast or follow-up article about the results of these polls.
Thank you everybody for participating!
Should I do more polls like this in the future? Are there any other questions you would like the answer to? Let me know in the comments.
If you are a fan of The Sewing Machine Newsletter, please feel free to share it with your fellow sewists via email, social media, etc.
I appreciate you all.
-Cale
I prefer vintage machines because they have few plastic parts and are readily fixable. Kenmores from the 60s to mid-70s are my favorites. Friends have showed me their computerized machines, and while they can do some handy things, there's nothing I'm willing to spend several thousand dollars more for.
I said I have more than 8 machines, but actually, I only have two, really. One is a Singer Featherweight, and the other is a Kenmore 158.1760 from 1975. The others are all in the process of being cleaned up before being donated. One of my hobbies is sewing, and the other is fixing up old sewing machines - two quite different things. I'm no collector, so I found a nonprofit that takes old machines to teach sewing to refugees. I get to play with them and then give them to people who can use them. Plus it keeps them out of the landfill.
I love the sewing machine postcards, thanks.
(Apologies for the long answer to short questions.)
My favorite machine is an Elna SU I bought in the late '70's from a Salvation Army store for $25. It has a feel like no other machine I've owned. During the pandemic I purchased various vintage machines I'd always admired, spruced them up, and donated them to people or replaced machines for people who had lost machines in the Sonoma/Santa Rosa fires. I grew fond of vintage Pfaff's from the '70's and '80's as well as the Viking green machines from the 1960's. I also bought a new Juki HZL- DX7 which has done very well by me in terms of making buttonholes and sewing thick fabrics using the floating foot feature.