If you ever go to a typewriter meet-up, you’ll likely never run out of conversation with attendees because there is such an overlap in niche enthusiasms. Sure, you’ll talk about typewriters, but soon you’ll be onto cameras or guitars or 3D printers or fountain pens or bicycles or printing presses or vacuum cleaners—or sewing machines.

I’ve been working on my Kenmore sewing machine recently, and I noted how similar the use, maintenance, and repair experience is to typewriters. There are typewriter/sewing machine people in the typosphere like Type the Clouds and Retro Tech Geneva, and from the very beginning, typewriters and sewing machines had a cosmic connection. Per Richard Polt, the Sholes & Glidden of the 1870s “looked rather like a sewing machine, as it was manufactured by the sewing machine department of the Remington arms company.”

In 2015, Wesleyan offered a course “The Sewing Machine and the Typewriter: A Very Short History of Work in America” which sounds interesting. Where’s my time machine so I can get to class on time?

I’ve always felt comfortable with the mechanical aspects of typewriters because I grew up sewing. Sewing machines are complex tools that have an added element of DANGER. I still bear the scar of running over my index finger as a kid. However, I also remember the deeply satisfying thrill of mastering the beast and creating something beautiful and unique. The sewing machine became a friendly (if dangerous) companion in my creative process since I sewed a lot of my own clothes growing up. For me, born near the tail-end of eight kids, sewing was a way to escape the hand-me-down cycle and create something that was completely my own.

My current weapon of choice is a 1973 all-metal Sears Kenmore 158.17033, made in Japan. It’s an incredible piece of precision engineering that I bought for $50 off Craigslist from three brothers cleaning out the family home—cabinet and box of cams and cool notion carrier included. It weighs a metric ton.

When I brought the machine home, I found a stray photo in the notions box. I think this may be the original owner, the mother of the men who sold me the machine. I keep her inside my cabinet and she inspires me while I sew.

My sister has a Kenmore too. You really can’t go into a thrift store without tripping over a Kenmore 158 or two. Replacement parts for these 50-60 year-old machines are easy to find at various online shops or eBay. My sister road her Kenmore 158 so hard she broke the foot controller. No worries! She found replacement parts and was back in business.

A couple weeks ago, I took out my sewing machine to make a dress for my daughter while she was on winter break. It worked perfectly but felt a little stiff, so I decided to do some cleaning and maintenance after I was done with the dress.

Like typewriters, there is a lot of information online about sewing machine use, maintenance, and repair. I particularly like the PungoLiving blog because of its detailed photos and careful descriptions of cleaning and maintenance.

My machine was filthy with thick greasy mats of lint and clumps of ratted-up thread in the guts. I never opened it up and I wouldn’t have known since it operated perfectly, if only a bit “stiff”.

I decided to check the gear case grease after reading this tutorial at Pungo Living:

A Tutorial – Re-Lubricating the Gear Case on a Kenmore Model 158 Series Sewing Machine

Well, well, well. I opened up my gear case and found a puck of hard grease:

I cleaned out the gears and re-packed them with synthetic automotive grease. Hopefully, we’re good for another 50 years.

Cleaned with mineral spirits and outfitted with new grease, it was time to do the oiling. I used Tri-Flow. Fortunately I had the sewing machine users manual and there are helpful illustrations showing points to place a drop of oil.

Now this thing truly runs like butter. Though it was sewing flawlessly, it had a rattle because there was too much play in the shuttle hook area. I saw that I had a broken shuttle driver spring:

I ordered a replacement spring from eBay and that quieted the rattle.

It’s sewing beautifully. In addition to built-in stitches, my 158 has all these fun, fancy pattern cam stitches. I finally sat down, read the manual, and figured out how to use the cams.

Now I want to make a dress like this dad created for his daughter:

My Kenmore 158 is in tip-top shape and ready for action. We are preparing to greet a new member of the family in the spring and will envelope this new arrival in blankets and bibs and sleepers and love. Sewing is creative, generative and generous, a form of personal expression often grounded in service and love. It brings to mind generations of moms and grandmas hunched over their machines.

The 40 year-old cookbook below is a marriage of the homely arts. My mom typed the recipes on our Royal KMM and stitched the binding on her Singer 301:

I have that machine. When I am out in California in the spring, I plan to pull out my mom’s Singer 301 from the garage and see if I can get it running. It was dead as a doornail last time I checked. I found this 28-episode series of relaxing and inspirational YouTube videos on dismantling and cleaning 301s that I plan to review before tackling the project.

Sewing machines aside, I have a couple typewriter projects in front of me. Last weekend, I brought home two nonfunctional typewriters that I will work on for another typospherian: a 1969 SM9 missing all its keylever springs and a 1948 Royal Arrow with a flying carriage. Below is a group picture of the distant relations of the machine family having a friendly meet-up.