Antique Singer 15 Class Treadle

This little machine has lived a long life at 121 years old! And it still purrs, I shot a few video clips when using the machine today. Check it out below!

This little Singer 15-30 machine came to me through a friend who knew that I loved to find and fix up old machines. It was totally beat up and left for dead on the side of the road.

It took a lot of TLC to get this little guy running again! You can read more about when I first started to give this machine a custom paint job here.

At first I used this machine as a hand-crank, see it here with the paint job freshly finished. It lived in my basement sewing space at that time, but I kept it covered up and didn't use it all that much.

A few years later I found a cabinet to fit this machine at a thrift store, and stripped it down to just the top and cast iron base. I ran the machine this way when it lived in our front room (see more pics here), using it from time to time. And let's face it, this little machine is pretty to look at!

The machine and cabinet went into basement storage a few years ago when we did our big first floor remodel to keep it safe. We filled our living room with an entirely new set of furniture, which meant there was no longer room for the machine. So it stayed in the basement for about 3 years.

At the end of last year I brought it up to my sewing studio, and added the side drawers back to the cabinet (because of course I didn't get rid of the extra treadle parts all those years ago).

I don't use this little guy very often, but I do appreciate seeing it every day in my studio. I feel real love for this guy, it's both a representation of bringing back an object on the brink of obscurity, and a reminder that just because something is old doesn't mean it's not useful.

As you may have noticed in the above pictures, right next to the treadle is now Sir Isaac's most favorite sewing studio napping place. I think this has less to do with the treadle, and everything to do with the position of the heat vent!

I've been collecting, fixing up, and loving vintage and antique sewing machines since about 1990. You can find a list of machines I have owned in my collection by looking at the left sidebar of the blog. I don't collect as aggressively as in past days, but I still love sewing on a vintage machine.