One of the ladies on an email discussion list I’m one was chatting the other day about how her mother made fancy dress costumes for her and her sister when they were kids. Nothing unusual about that for those of my vintage. And then she said this:
She also made us matching bathing suits out of orange plaid seersucker. Her sewing machine was a weapon of mass humiliation.
I’ve never thought of a sewing machine like that, but I can see how for some people home-made clothes were more than an embarrassment. Orange plaid seersucker bathers? Wow.
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 
Oh what a treasure! Is this machine yours?
Greetings from Vienna, Austria! Elisabeth
No, it’s a picture I found on the internet. But I did learn to sew on a Singer treadle machine! Not quite as ornate as this one, nor perhaps as old, but a Singer treadle nonetheless. My machine these days is a Husqvarna Viking Sapphire 870, after 30+ years of a Bernina.