I am a collector and restorer of Vintage Sewing machines. This page is a personal indulgence of mine in sharing the beauty of these machines with others.

I live in Melbourne, Australia and have been a collector of one sort or another for much of my adult life. In 2021 during the pandemic I found an old Singer treadle in a beautiful table at an opportunity shop, some would call a thrift store. I had always admired these old machines. I had no idea that bringing that machine home would be the beginning of a passion for these old machines. (Possibly also a rekindling of my childhood memories of learning to sew on my mother’s straight stitch Japanese Blue and Chrome machine) .

My 1905 Sphinx 15k treadle is beautiful and it started this journey of discovery of antique and vintage sewing machines (VSMs). This is her, when I got her home in 2021.. The beauty of the Sphinx Egyptian decals is what got me drawn in.

Restoration

As I wanted to restore this first machine and did not want to ruin her beautiful decals. I decided to get another machine to practice on. Unfortunately that machine was 1919 Singer 66 with red eye decals even nicer than my sphinx, well you get the idea. Finally Singer number 5 enabled me to learn how to restore these machines. My Singer journey continued, as that is what people collect..right? Singers?

I looked at the for sale listings on gumtree, Facebook marketplace and Ebay on a regular basis, picking up Singer bits and pieces, learning all the time. I realised that many of the non singer machines were sitting on sales pages for long periods of time. No one was buying them, even some listed for free, just sat there. So why?

CFM Pinnock

Then I found a shiny CFM Pinnock, it looked like an old fashioned radio and it was orange. I fell in love, promptly contacted the seller and collected it. The rest is history, I have now begun my journey into Vintage shiny Japanese machines…plus the rest. It turned out that this vintage modern looking machine (image below) was badged Pinnock, but also CFM… well what did that mean? Little did I know it would open the flood gates to more interesting machines and their origins. This machine also known in the U.S. and other parts of the world as Dressmaker 2000, so how could it be an Australian machine?

Comment

Please feel free to contact me or leave a comment below. I am no expert, just a collector and there are many more learned people out there. Especially in some of the online social media groups and information lists. I’ll list some in the Links page.

Patricia Leigh

Pinnock Sewing machines.