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A Vintage Old Lady for Valentine’s Day

February 12, 2016 •

A vintage Pfaff 1171 sewing machine

A vin­tage Pfaff 1171 sewing machine

My 25-year-old Pfaff sewing machine is com­ing home from the tune-up shop this week­end. She needed repairs to her presser foot, and adjust­ments to ten­sion and stitch­ing pre­ci­sion. The repair­man also cleaned the mov­ing parts and removed the gunky oil and grease that had caused her to lock up.

These are the prob­lems that occur when a pre­ci­sion mechan­i­cal device is neglected for more than a decade. Now the repair­man says she’s run­ning “like brand new” [sic].

Mechanical versus Electronic?

I was lucky to buy this work­horse sewing machine, right at the tran­si­tion point when lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers were flirt­ing with early LCD screens and prim­i­tive soft­ware appli­ca­tions for high-end sewing machines.

Hav­ing spent my career in soft­ware and later at Apple, I was leery about the pit­falls of buy­ing an impor­tant house­hold appli­ance that was utterly depen­dent on early gen­er­a­tion soft­ware — and worse, soft­ware devel­oped by peo­ple who don’t under­stand what it takes to pro­duce (and main­tain) great soft­ware.

To put things in per­spec­tive: the Web had­n’t been invented, the Inter­net was used only by sci­en­tists and aca­d­e­mics, and few peo­ple had email addresses. The Mac had only been around for a few years, and Microsoft had not yet released Win­dows 3.o/3.1 — the ver­sions that cat­a­pulted them into the Big Time. Those were the early days of com­put­ers and soft­ware designed for ordi­nary peo­ple to use…

After exam­in­ing those early mod­els, I could see how poorly those indus­trial-era man­u­fac­tur­ers under­stood the require­ments of soft­ware capa­ble of delight­ing con­sumers for years to come. Unlike the 1990s prod­uct design­ers, my high tech career had taught me the impor­tance of:

  • A deep under­stand­ing of usabil­ity, and how must-haves ver­sus nice-to-haves will dif­fer across the var­i­ous seg­ments of peo­ple who use sewing machines
  • Use cases and require­ments rel­e­vant to spe­cific cat­e­gories of sewing: e.g., gar­ments ver­sus quilts ver­sus embroi­dery
  • Ease of soft­ware updates and bug fixes
  • Local­iza­tion of the user inter­face. As it is, the printed man­u­als are hard enough to use, because multi-lin­gual instruc­tions are inter­min­gled — rather than lan­guage-spe­cific sec­tions
  • Screen leg­i­bil­ity under the ambi­ent light­ing con­di­tions for home or pro­fes­sional sewing machine users

Despite my ini­tial inter­est in state-of-the-art elec­tronic machines, I opted for the tried-and-true mechan­i­cal approach, where the man­u­fac­tur­ers excelled. My 25-year-old machine relies on push but­ton con­trols, dials and levers to adjust set­tings. It has a “heavy duty build.” There’s no soft­ware to break, or con­troller boards to replace.

Buy­ing a mechan­i­cal sewing machine proves to have been a wise deci­sion for that time… When you scan Ebay, Craigslist or sewing enthu­si­ast blogs, you can see the lengths that some peo­ple go to in their quest to find a vin­tage mechan­i­cal sewing machine from Bern­ina or Pfaff… I feel lucky to have cho­sen as I did. I flinch at the prices charged for com­pa­ra­ble mod­els today.

While I’m attracted to some of the con­ve­nience fea­tures of today’s high end machines, it’s hard to ratio­nal­ize their high prices, just to match the func­tion­al­ity I have now… If I start sewing a lot, as I did in my teens and twen­ties, then a pre­mium sewing machine might make more sense. It’s hard to jus­tify now.

Thanks to an $89 tune-up, my Pfaff 1171 will run smoothly and sweetly once again. Bet­ter yet, I still have all the parts and acces­sories, all the nee­dles and bob­bins, plus a sewing cab­i­net with a (semi-func­tional) hydraulic lift. It’s a great set-up for my episodic use — peri­ods of intense projects fol­lowed by months (years?) of inac­tiv­ity. For what­ever rea­son, sewing is start­ing to appeal to me again.

New Projects

The green cover needs repair

The green cover needs repair

My hus­band hopes to repair the pro­tec­tive cov­ers for Frol­ic’s sails. It’s unlikely that this Pfaff has the horse­power for such a heavy-duty sewing project: sewing through mul­ti­ple lay­ers of can­vas. He focuses on how small the sail cov­ers are, and there­fore believes this project should be well within the capa­bil­i­ties of our vin­tage Pfaff. We’ll see what hap­pens.

But for now I can’t wait to start some eas­ier projects with Madame Pfaff, once that she’s back from her spa treat­ments tomor­row.

First up: a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion fea­tur­ing some vin­tage Thai silk, sewn from the rem­nants of fab­ric used for cur­tains in my hus­band’s child­hood home in Swarth­more.

Closing Thoughts

Happy Valen­tine’s Day to me, from Madame “Tip­per” Pfaff. A true old lady, with beauty and ele­gance that’s hard to match.

My sis­ter is lucky to have my moth­er’s Pfaff 1171. I just hope she knows where to get it tuned up when needed… (We live on oppo­site coasts.)

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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