by Heather Foster

Created on: April 18, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

My family jokes about coming from farm country, where if anything breaks, duct tape, baling wire, Band-Aids, and super glue will fix it just fine. Well, that is partially true for us. If we can't locate the necessary part to fix an item we do a little poor man's engineering' and make do with what we have.

This happened with my, now thirty-eight-year-old sewing machine. My parents bought my sewing machine for me as a birthday present, brand new, top-of-the-line, expensive [at least at that time] and all for an eleven-year-old girl who loved to make her own clothes. Sewing was fun and it saved money on clothes. Plus I could make things that I liked to wear, my style.

Getting back to the main topic now, my older son and his friends had moved the sewing machine from the kitchen table to the floor so they could use the table. Later, while running through the house, chasing one another, one of them tripped over my poor sewing machine and broke the reverse switch. Later, when I got home, they acted like it was my fault the machine was broken, because if I hadn't left it in their way on the table they wouldn't have put it on the floor to be tripped over. Needless to say, this did nothing to brighten my day.

I called the local parts department for Sears and asked about getting a reverse switch to replace the broken one. Their response was that the machine was too old and they no longer carried parts for that model. According to them I'd just have to throw my precious machine away and buy a new one. There was no money to buy a new one, and this one was fine but for that switch. Also, I couldn't afford to take it to a repair shop, which wouldn't be able to find the part either, and would charge me a large fee just to look at it and tell me they couldn't fix my poor machine.

I took apart the end of the machine that would give me access to the reverse switch, to see if I could fix it myself. Lo and behold, the stupid switch was made of plastic! Super glue didn't hold and duct tape was too thick. So off to the hardware store I went seeking an alternative.

The guys at Home Depot thought I was crazy, looking for parts to fix a sewing machine, how silly of me. However, knowing just what would do the trick, I went to that aisle. There I found two small angle brackets and some small nuts and bolts to hold them together. Hooray' was galloping through my mind as I paid for my items and headed home.

Back to the sewing machine, I took out the screws that held the poor, broken switch lever and removed the pieces. Placing the angle brackets together, with the angle coming out and reaching for the ceiling, I screwed the two screws into the correct places. Then I took the small bolts, pushed them through the angle reaching up and threaded the nuts on tight.

Once that job was complete, I put the sewing machine back together and started sewing again. Every time I needed to reverse stitches to lock the sewing in place I just pressed down on the top bolt through the bracket and back-stitched, easily. It worked like a charm! Back to happily stitching along making quilts, clothing, and repairs on clothing the kids ruined just being kids. Boy was I happy I'd saved my dear sewing machine from an ignominious death, being destroyed just because that little plastic switch broke. Hey, metal lasts longer anyway!

The next time I went into Home Depot one of the employees recognized me from that day and asked me if I'd ever gotten the sewing machine fixed. I smiled and said, "Yes I did. Stanley hardware fixed it up just fine." His stunned reaction told me that; yes indeed I'd gotten the last laugh out of that one.

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