Sarnia vintage sewing machine collector keeps on treadling

Craig Murphy is unique among the members of the Sarnia Quilters Guild.

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“I’m the only male in it, and I’m also the only one that’s treadling,” he said Saturday while demonstrating a vintage foot-powered treadle sewing machine during the Lambton Fall Color and Craft Festival.

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Curator-supervisor Dana Thorne said they added historical demonstrations a few years ago to the two-day festival and craft sale which is the largest annual fundraiser for the Lambton County museum located in Lambton Shores.

Light rain greeted early arrivals Saturday but Thorne said the event and his fans aren’t deterred by the weather.

“It’s still going to be a great weekend,” she said. “We’ve definitely had rain on craft sale weekend before and thrived.”

The festival, which had about 65 vendors set up on the museum grounds, continued Sunday, 10 am to 4 pm The Lambton Heritage Museum is located on Highway 21, across from the entrance to Pinery Provincial Park.

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“I got my first machine four years ago and now I have 32 – all treadles, all pre-1920,” Murphy said.

“I try to get my hands on anything that’s going to the scrapyard.”

Murphy said he talks to a lot of folks while running a glass installation business in Sarnia, which can lead to old and unused sewing machines being added to his collection.

“They start to realize I might be a good place for their machine, because I want them all to stay working,” he said.

Every machine in the collection still works. “Once you clean the rust off and oil them, they’ll stitch,” Murphy said. “They might need a minor adjustment.”

A treadle machine he used Saturday dates from 1889, which he noted is a decade older than the historic schoolhouse where his demonstration was set up.

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“There’s only a few more I’m looking for” to complete the collection, he said. But those ones are hard to find. “I probably won’t ever find one.”

Collecting sewing machines led him to quilting, and he had a few quilts displayed at the schoolhouse, including one made of vintage fabric squares created by his great-grandmother.

“That was the first one I did,” Murphy said. It’s “not great by any means but I just wanted to finish something of hers.”

He learned to quilt from instructions he found online, and later joined the local quilter’s guild

The weekend was his third time volunteering as an historical demonstrator at the museum’s craft festival,

“I enjoy it every year,” Murphy said.

During the demonstrations he often hears stories about family quilts and memories of seeing treadle sewing machines at the homes of grandparents.

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Murphy was sewing colorful pillowcases Saturday and flattering out wrinkles with an old-fashion hand iron heated on the schoolhouse’s wood-fired stove.

He said the pieces he was assembling there will be among about 450 homemade pillowcases a local group donates to Bluewater Health each Christmas season.

Murphy traces his interest in machines to his childhood.

“When I was a kid, my grandfather always had a pile of machines sitting in the barn,” he said.

Murphy said his family was the last to use farm equipment from the Whitebread Syndicate in Southern Lambton County.

He said a century or more ago farmers who couldn’t afford to buy all of the machinery they needed on their own, often formed syndicates to pool funds and buy equipment that was used on each member’s farm.

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Whitebread is an once busy community that sits between Wallaceburg and Port Lambton.

The former syndicate’s machinery is restored and still in working condition, he said.

Murphy offered that family history as an explanation for why he’s also a “purist” who would rather use a treadle sewing machine than a modern electric model.

Contemporary machines will do some things “a little bit faster but if it’s straight-line stitching, I can go just as fast,” he said.

“My wife laughs at me,” Murphy said. “She’s not into it, at all.”

Murphy said he typically spends an hour each day sewing with machines from his collection.

“It’s my time to wind down,” he said.

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