Fruita quilters find a common thread through featherweight sewing group
FRUITA, Colo. — At Owl’s Nest Quilters in Grand Junction, you could hear the quiet "click-click-click" of antique motors cycling needles up and down.
There were casual murmurs and bursts of laughter. It was a room full of mostly older women and they had something unique in common: they all own a Singer Featherweight Sewing machine. They were there for a workshop to learn how to maintain their little antique beauties.
This niche community was created by Fruita quilter Karen Murray-Boston.
Having studied the inner workings of her own Featherweight, she is the expert in the room. This group of people is looking to her to guide them through opening up their machines and cleaning, greasing, and oiling them. Many of these machines are almost ninety years old, and still ticking. Murray-Boston may be the Featherweight expert here, but the truth is she has probably been sewing for fewer years than most of the folks in the room.
It’s in the family
Murray-Boston’s love of the Singer Featherweight was born from her husband's genealogical studies. He was searching through the Boston family tree and came across a mention of a Civil War quilt made by Caroline Boston. An archaeologist by profession, Richard Boston sensed a thread worth pulling.
The woman who mentioned the quilt turned out to be Richard Boston’s third cousin who had inherited the quilt through the Boston maternal line. Made in the late 1800s, the quilt was called "The Civil War Quilt" because it had 320 names of soldiers and their regiments embroidered onto it.
Richard Boston said, “We’ve got 320 names and it was like, 'Where'd all these come from? And how did it get made and when did it get made?' … almost immediately we started to divide up the names between [my third cousin], myself and my brother Earl, and thinking we would maybe find three or four soldiers someplace along the way.”
They didn’t stop until they had identified every individual on the quilt.
A story emerged. The quilt is now housed in the International Quilt Study Center and Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. It is considered to be a national treasure, a record of real human lives from an extraordinary time. Furthermore, they learned what a remarkable woman their ancestor was. Caroline Boston was a nurse in the Civil War and a member of Dorothea Dix’s army of women nurses who cared for soldiers.
A straight line
Interested in any heritage craft, Karen Murray-Boston is no stranger to diving down rabbit holes. She wanted to be involved in the journey of discovery. Her specific thread? She wanted to know how the quilt was made. To do that, she’d need to learn how to sew them. As a Valentine's Day gift, Richard Boston paid for her to attend a quilt-making class. It turns out modern quilters have a love for one sewing machine in particular: the Singer Featherweight 221.
Murray-Boston didn’t start out with the Featherweight. She had a modern inexpensive plastic machine.
“The gal teaching the class kept going, ‘Are you having problems sewing a straight line?’ I said, ‘Well, I'm trying. I'm doing the best I can.’” The teacher concluded Murray-Boston’s machine was the culprit, making it harder to learn how to sew. Murray-Boston remembered, “I kept saying, ‘You know, maybe I need a decent machine if I'm going to really do this.’”
Murray Boston recalled, “We were at the quilt shop one day, and this woman walks in and she says, ‘Do you know where I can list a sewing machine for sale?’ And I said, ‘Right here! What do you have?’”
The woman wasn’t selling a Featherweight, but she was selling a much nicer machine than what Murray-Boston had been using. Murray-Boston bought it and her lines were straighter. But, what was the woman replacing it with? A Singer Featherweight. She was traveling in an RV and wanted to keep quilting on the road and the Featherweight, true to its original intent, was the perfect portable sewing machine.
This was Murray-Boston’s introduction to the little workhorse of a machine. Shortly after her new purchase, she bought a Featherweight.
The little machine that could
The Singer Featherweight was in production from 1933 into the late 1960s. It was noticeably smaller than any other machine made and it all packed up tightly in a little carrying case. It was light to carry. It was a social sewing machine; you could actually take your machine to a gathering and sew with your friends.
“So the Singer Featherweight, which started to sell in 1933, (the first year) was $150. In 1933, that was a lot of money!” exclaimed Murray-Boston. “But by the time these machines had lived out their lives, they couldn't even sell them for $35. Which is very sad.”
In the 1960s, newer stream-lined machines were flooding the market that could do tricky stitches. All the Featherweight could do was a straight-line stitch. But, it did that really well and has out-lasted trendy market-based design. They are so popular today that it is hard to find one for under $400. Murray-Boston says some rarer ones can fetch up to $10,000.
Keep it sewing
Murray-Boston likes to point out how we have progressed beyond gender roles concerning sewing. But, it was not long ago when sewing was ‘for women only’. Conversely, it was a man’s job to work on anything with grease and gears. On the day of the workshop, most of the students were older women who have this gender specificity in their minds. You could see the trepidation some of them felt in opening up the mystery of their machines.
Sewing is not just needles and thread. It is a relationship with your machine and machines need to be cared for or they will let you down. The traditional model was to take your machine to a repair "man." Murray-Boston’s desire was to liberate these women and teach them that knowledge is the power to maintain their machines on their own.
“My main reason for wanting to do this class for you [is to show you] … you don't have to pay $100 every six months to have somebody clean your machine. You can do it yourself.”
At the end of the workshop, everyone packed up their machines in their little wooden boxes, and clicked the latches closed, and walked out with a little more confidence and the knowledge required to keep these machines stitching straight for another 90 years.
If you would like more information on Featherweights in Western Colorado, you can reach Murray-Boston at karen@frecklesandfatquartersfarm.com.
Cullen Purser is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at cullenpurser@rmpbs.org.