Singer Genie 354 Revisited

Remember this sad relic I picked up over a year ago?

After suffering buyer's remorse for 14 months, I got tired of looking at it on the floor of the shop and decided I had to do something - either fix it up or part it out.  Besides being dirty and scuffed up, it had two things wrong - both cosmetic.  The trim piece beside the take-up lever was missing, as was the plastic disc covering the clutch release.  Miraculously, the 6620C I parted out about the same time as I acquired the Genie

 had a very similar clutch release setup and I was able to utilize the 6620 part to replace the missing Genie part.  It's a slightly different color, but close enough and certainly better than none at all!

That was the easy part.  I had no machine to borrow the trim piece from and had to get creative.

Fortunately, the trim piece has all straight sides and I was able to fashion a substitute from 1/8" clear lucite.  The clear part was not much better than none at all, so I rifled through Kathie's fabric stash looking for a small piece of fabric having some or all of the colors of the neighboring trim to place behind the clear part.  To my dismay, Kathie does not like to use orange or yellow fabrics in her quilts, so nothing in her stash even came close.  I also had the problem of how to attach the new piece and decided on transparent, double-sided duct tape. I would place the tape on the clear glass, then a piece of cream fabric to match the body of the Genie, then another piece of tape to fasten the trim piece to the machine.  When I installed the first piece of tape, I found that the color of the duct tape matched close enough that I didn't need to sandwich in a piece of cream fabric.

It's all together and sewing now, I no longer have to look at it sitting on the shop floor in pieces.

Ed's Vintage Sewing Machine Store

Singer Genie 354

  I picked up this machine a few weeks ago while I was in New Hampshire to attend my 50th high school reunion. It is a Singer model 354, known as the Genie.

  Not quite the vintage or quality I normally like, but since it was the supposed successor to the Featherweight, I feel it is a "Milestone Machine" and I really should have one in my collection.

  You can see from the views of the exterior, it has led a rough life but I believe it has only been used for mending.  Why do I say that?

 The single bobbin that came with the machine had ELEVEN different colors wound on it - cream, orange, red, purple, light red, dark red, tan, orange, tan, green, and white. Some pieces were so short they could not be seen until I unwound the layers above them.  No decent sewing project could be sewn with those little bits of thread.

  It is missing a few parts, the tough one is going to be the trim piece beside the take-up lever.

If anyone has a Singer 353 or 354 parts machine, I would like to talk to you about this item. It is also missing the plastic cover to the clutch release but the 6620C I just acquired has one I can cannibalize - probably the only part on that machine I can use!