This is Lela! She is a Singer 24 chain stitch machine. Her Serial Number is AG740463 which gives her a birth date of 1946!
I was able to find parts of her original brochure on line at Alan Quinn's Needlebar.org. It reads:
THE SINGER NO. 24
The general advantages of this type of machine for family sewing comprise greatest ease and quietness of operation, simplicity of construction, and the elasticity of the single-thread seam. When needle is threaded the machine is ready, the stitch requiring neither bobbin nor shuttle. The thread is taken from one spool, and is so interwoven and twisted that seams cannot rip unless the finished end be unlocked. When this is done the entire length of thread can be quickly withdrawn without injury to the fabric. Guaranteed to be in every point the best single thread chain-stitch machine on the market.
From a Singer brochure entitled "Singer Machines For Family Sewing"
And this little bit:
"The Automatic tension device has exceptional excellence; it is so operated that, at each vertical reciprocation of the needle,
exactly the correct length of thread is supplied and "slip-stitching" is absolutely impossible."
Singer description
Why is it that the fancier that sewing machines get, the more computerized, the more features and embroidery capabilities, the more bells and whistles they have, the more I want to run and play with my vintage babies?
Oh..and her name is Lela, because this machine belonged to the sellers great aunt, and it had been owned and used by HER mother in law (Lela's MIL) Lilly before her. I got the full family run down on this machine. The only thing I didn't know was the manufacturing date until I could get her home and check out her serial number online.
Welcome Home, Lela! You are in good company here!
