So far, sew good: Sarnia 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 while demonstrating a vintage foot-powered treadle sewing machine at the Lambton Fall Color and Craft Festival Oct. 14.

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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, the largest annual fundraiser for the Lambton County Museum on Highway 21 in Lambton Shores.

Light rain greeted early arrivals but Thorne said event fans were undeterred.

“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, wrapped up Oct. 15.

“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.”

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Murphy said he talks to lots of folks while running a glass installation business in Sarnia, which can lead to old, 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 at the event dates from 1889 – a decade older than the historic schoolhouse where the demonstration was held.

“There’s only a few more I’m looking for” to complete the collection, he said, but they’re hard to come by. “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.

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“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

It was his third time volunteering as a historical demonstrator at the craft festival, he said. “I enjoy it every year.”

During demonstrations, he often hears stories about family quilts and memories of seeing treadle sewing machines in grandparents’ homes.

Murphy was sewing colorful pillowcases at the event and flattering out wrinkles with an old-fashioned 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 every Christmas season.

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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 the machinery they needed often formed syndicates to pool funds and buy equipment for use on each member’s farm.

Whitebread is a once busy community 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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