So, I just got a new sewing machine. Well, not that new. It looks to have been made in the mid-1950’s. It is a Singer Model 301A, painted haze gray. It came with the cabinet shown in the pictures, which turns out to be an original cabinet designed for this model of Singer sewing machine. The cabinet is the No. 74 Spinet Cabinet. The sewing machine is in working order, and I was able to get sew a straight line stitch on a piece of fabric for about three inches before the thread on the upper spool ran out. No big loss there, since it was an odd pink thread, but the spool it was threaded on is made of wood, so that is certainly not going anywhere.
The operation of the machine is kind of interesting. Instead of having a foot-pedal to control the speed of the machine, it instead has a pressure plate for your right knee that you can move from side to side to regulate the speed. It looks like it is just a plate that pushes against a foot-pedal that is mounted inside of the cabinet, but I have not yet taken the time to try and move the pedal down to the floor to try it there. The light on the machine also works just fine, as does the stitch length adjustment.
The hard part for this machine is going to be getting more bobbins for it. It had one in the machine, and no spares in the tool kit for the machine. Since it takes special 301 bobbins that are apparently no longer made, I will have to go on a bit of a hunt. I will see if I can find any locally at one of the local specialty stores, and if that fails there is always E-Bay.
