Welcome to the Vintage Stitcher Sews!

Welcome to my little corner of "blogland".   My name is Kari Ramsay and among my many hats of trade, repairing and re-selling vintage sewing machines is among them.  I love this as more of a hobby than anything, so please know that my "expertise" is limited.  I "save" vintage and antique Singer sewing machines, and occasionally other brands as well.  I clean them, oil and fix them and then send them off to new homes.

Most of the vintage machines that I save, are grubby, dirty, smelly, little sewing machines that have not been loved or used in a really long time.  I think my favorite part of saving them, and thus re-selling these little beauties is that they all have a bit of a Cinderella story.  My aim is to share that story with you and hopefully educate you along the way.  Each of these machines has a story, and for many of them the story is just beginning.  I won't buy an old machine that I don't think I can save.

The pictures above are "Before", she got cleaned.  It's a Singer 401A and she just recently went to a new home in California, her new owner Nancy is very excited to have her!

See the brown "crud" around the bobbin winder mechanism in the before photo? That is old nicotine tar from cigarette smoke.  Pretty common on the old machines actually, it seems everyone smoked back in the day,

This is how a Singer 301 came to me.  Nasty right?  I am not sure it was ever cleaned before I got it.  She was completely seized up.  I saved her though and she purrs like a kitten now.

I hope to be able to show my process of cleaning and salvaging these old sewing machines.  In that process I have learned so much, but am still learning.  So if you have questions I will try and answer them, but I won't know everything.  So I may direct you to another site where you might be able to be helped.

I will be putting vintage sewing machines on this site for sale at some point in the near future.  All of the machines I sell, are oiled, greased, well cleaned, and have all the parts ready to go.  Most of all I want the buyer to be able to SEW with their new machine!

So until next time. Happy Stitching!