Singer Featherweight 222k

 It's been a while since I featured a new machine here.  Mostly I've been selling them, not adding them. I'm trying to downsize. This post shows my "skeleton crew" of machines that made the purge.

But then I added just one more because no collection is totally complete without THIS ONE. Singer Featherweight 222K

These aren't readily available in the U.S., they were never sold here so when you find one it came in from Canada or the U.K. where they were made. Many of them have the 220v motors which need to be replaced, rewound for 110v, or used with a step down transformer.  

Happily, this one is from Canada so it has a 110v motor and no revisions were needed.  

Basically the appeal is twofold, the main thing being this: a tubular free arm.  There were few, if any, Singers of that era that had a free arm (the Singer 320 was one of them, but I don't know if that came before or after this model) so for the most part you had to get a European branded machine (Bernina, for example) if you wanted a free arm in the 1950s.  

Also, this model, unlike a 221 Featherweight, has a feed dog drop that is actually quick and easy to accomplish.  No fiddly knob underneath the machine like the other black Singers, but a super easy lever to go up and down. 

I've never done this, but I think if you had to sew a badge on a sleeve, you could do it really easily with this tiny little free arm! Ditto if you had to add patches or darns on the knees of jeans

This machine came equipped with a free motion foot, and it truly does beautiful FM work.  I do NOT have skills at free motion, so disregard my clumsy attempts to doodle a design and focus instead on how smoothly and beautifully it stitches.  Of course you couldn't get an entire quilt in there, but you could do FM quilting on small projects in addition to darning and embroidery.

So by my own set of rules, there is no reason to have both a 222 and a 221.  Every machine has to have a unique purpose, remember?  But since I made the rule, I can also bend the rule. They are both beautiful, dontcha think?

Singer 221 (1950) and Singer 222 (1954)

And the first thing I sewed on the 222 was a dust cover for her case. That is pretty much the first project I sew on every new machine.    PATTERN HERE