Mrs Thompson

I recently spent about 50 hours of work in restoring my maternal grandmother's 1905 Singer treadle sewing machine.

I used to mess with it as a kid, up in her sewing room. She'd call up the stairs: "Are you on my sewing machine?"...and of course, I'd deny it.

She passed away many years ago and it sat in my sister's basement for quite a while. One day my sister called and asked if I would like to have it. She mentioned that she had found a note inside which read: "Mike, if you ever need to fix this, Mrs. Thompson can help". You see, "Mrs Thompson" was an imaginary person that she had fabricated and often used when she would telephone and wanted to prank us with a fake identity.

Well Mama, Mrs Thompson helped quite a bit on this project. I had to re-veneer one panel on the lid but was careful not to disturb what remains of the delicate original decaling.

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It is likely more important to preserve what remains as an apparent imperfection in such work as it would similarly embraced in our memory.