Here’s my Kenmore 52, formerly my great aunt’s machine (by way of my mom, who had it in her closet for 30 years). I needed a new foot control, which I got from the sears parts website, and I cleaned and oiled the machine and it’s up and running. Amazingly, the lightbulb still works after all these years. Isn’t it a handsome machine. My main machine is a lovely computerized Viking Platinum series, but I love my Kennie too.
I wish I had a better picture for you, but I have my machines on a double school lab desk I bought at a vintage furniture shop. Only one side of the desk is visible in the photo, but there is a second desk part on the far side of the drawer bank (in the photo you can see the edge of my covered serger, which is sitting on the other desk). This desk was filthy when I bought it, and the black top kept rubbing off, but after a thorough cleaning and applying a sealer to the desk top, it really is the perfect sewing desk. I have a stool on wheels so I can scoot from the sewing machine side to the serger side, I keep my sewing accessories in the smaller drawers and Onion patterns and my files of copies of the “all styles” pages from Burda WOF and Ottobre magazines in the bottom drawer. There is a writing surface that pulls out over the top drawer which I use for pinning. The desk came complete with carved graffiti from the desk’s former life at a school. It was apparently used with a machine that didn’t work well, at least that is what the graffiti mentions. I wonder if it was a sewing machine in a home ec class or some kind of a shop class machine; I’d guess the latter, by the amount of grime I had to clean off the desk. Both my machine and my desk have secret former lives that I’ll never know about. I’m glad that I took the time to clean them both up and put them back to use.
