These Singer’s a fine machine, but in my humble opinion, there’s nothing quite like naturally grown clothes.

I’m probably in the minority on this one. Most people would look at this Singer Fashion Mate Sewing Machine with its 100 built-In stitches and its time-saving Automatic Needle Threader, and think, “Who wouldn’t want to wear clothes made on this thing?” They might say, “This thing’s got Automatic Stitch Length & Width that ensures the right stitch settings every time and 6 Fully Automatic 1-Step Buttonholes, so you know you can trust it to do just what you want.” And they’re right; like I said, it’s a fine machine. But it’s just not how I was raised.

Look, when you grow up on a clothing farm like I did – helping your dad with the annual tee-shirt harvest, going out to the orchard to pick the ripe cardigans, taking a trowel to dig up the plump khakis – you get a soft-spot for homegrown attire. Sure, sometimes you get some cargo shorts where the pocket’s didn’t grow in big enough, or you get a tee with a faded (or, if the conditions weren’t right, completely nonsensical) graphic, but if you ask me, that stuff just adds character.

Then again, I understand that these days, people aren’t after character; they’re after precision. They don’t want to leave it up to mother nature. They want to buy the raw, unrefined, fresh-from-the mine fabric and run it through something like this Singer, because they feel nervous when they’re not in control. And that’s fine, I guess. I mean, I’ll never fully understand it, but hey, to each his own, right?

Back to top