She wishes more “homegrown” Americans would pursue the craft like her father did, but given that students no longer take high school home economics classes or learn to sew at home as they did in previous generations, their baseline skill levels are not what they used to be, she said.

“People need to see you work,” he said, his red-framed glasses sliding down to the bridge of his nose as he focused intensely on hemming a pair of beige pants. “That’s the key in this business.”

Use kerosene or mineral spirits to clean the machine. I wouod go with kerosene to be honest. Then redo the shellac finish with french polishing. This is heavy documented with old sewing machines as they use these gold decals that f becomes silvered when water or cleaning solvents touch them.

I dissolved some oil paint in machine oil, in my first tries I used universal machine oil but it was too thick, so I tried sewing machine oil that was much thinner. That worked much better but it was still a bit too thick so I was having some trouble “making it run” along the ribbon, so I used lighter fluid as a thinner. It worked great. I eyeballed everything so I can’t give proportions of the ingredients, in a future more serious attempt I plan to take some measurements.

June Mathis