When I took Ray White's sewing machine repair course, I tried to ask the Elna man himself what his favorite machine was. While I don't think he wanted to bias the class by singling out one machine, he did speak very highly of the Elna Carina. I was intrigued. I had never seen a Carina, nor was I able to observe one being worked on in the classroom, so I made a mental note to keep an eye out for one of these and see for myself what all the hype was about.
Read MoreIt seems like forever since I reviewed the Bernina 730 Record. Today we'll be looking at the next incarnation in the Bernina x30 series, the ever-popular, 830. This workhorse holds an 11 year 'record' for being Bernina's top of the line offering between 1971 to 1982. Now that's a long time! This, is undoubtably one of the most sought after vintage Berninas on the aftermarket today. Let's find out why.
Read MoreA few weeks ago, I reviewed the Singer Deluxe Monogrammer--one of my favorite vintage attachments. Today, we'll be taking a look at the Monogrammer by Singer, a smaller and more common slant shank attachment that comes packaged with a complete set of letters.
Read MoreThe two most common hook types are rotary hooks and oscillating hooks. Rotary hooks spin around 360 degrees while oscillating hooks rotate about 200 degrees before doubling back on itself and never complete a full rotation. For the vast majority of people, there is no practical difference. As a rule of thumb, rotary hooks are capable of achieving much higher top speeds because there is minimal resistance on the hook when spinning all the way around. Oscillating hooks on the other hand, need to reverse momentum with each oscillation, thereby introducing a ton more resistance and vibration
Read MorePrior to going vintage, I've spent more money than I'm willing to admit on many different modern machines. I've tried everything ranging from bare bones Singers, budget Brothers, mechanical Berninas, and computerized Janomes.
I remember feeling completely overwhelmed with machine choices when I first started getting into sewing. Like with most other purchases, I waded through myriad of reviews online. What I found was that even after countless hours of research, I'd constantly get sucked into feature creep--drawn by the allure of more stitch patterns and more automatic features. And while all of this sounds terrific in theory, I found out (the hard way) that I didn't need or even want these features in practice. In fact, sometimes, just having those extras can make basic functionality on your machine less practical to use!
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