Bette Boellstorff, right, and one of her daughters, Leslie Reed, work on a gift during a sewing retreat years ago. (Photo courtesy of Carrie Knapp)
LINCOLN, Neb. — It seems that Bette Boellstorff never met a sewing machine she didn’t like.
Over more than 40 years of collecting, from bidding at farm sales, via tips from neighbors and friends, and through donations from people who knew she loved sewing machines, Boellstorff amassed a collection that topped more than 300 machines.
Her collection ranged from dozens of classic Singer machines, from the Standard 1 — the company’s first machine in 1850 — to portable Featherweights, prized by quilters. Machines in shades of blue, pink and orange. Toy machines and bulky, iron industrial models and the iconic Singer 66 Red-Eye, with its ornate decals and design.
There are foot-pedaled treadle machines from the 19th century and electric models spanning the 20th century.
For most sewers, one machine would be enough.
But Boellstorff loved history, said Carrie Knapp, one of her daughters, and every machine had a story behind it. One was used to help a family make ends meet during the Depression. Another was used to create a beautiful wedding dress. Yet another had been passed down from pioneer days.
“She could see history in every single machine,” Knapp said. “She could see a woman’s life in that. It was a woman’s means of production. She valued that.”
To document the machines’ history, Bette kept an index card on every machine — where it was built, who used it, and its back story.
New homes needed
Boellstorff died in 2012, and the family recently decided that her collection of sewing machines — which filled a small house on the family’s farm near Brock, Nebraska — needed to find new homes.
An auction is scheduled Nov. 1 and 2 in Syracuse to sell off her collection, which now numbers around 270 machines, give or take a couple more if they’re found on the farm.
Included in the auction will be fabric that Boellstorff (pronounced “bells-dorf”) collected over the years, some dating back to the 1920s.
Auctioneer Liz Hunt said that in decades of work, she’s never seen a comparable auction of sewing machines and materials.
“It’s legitimately the auction of a lifetime,” said Hunt, who was recently named the nation’s top auctioneer by the International Association of Top Professionals.
She said she’s expecting bidders to come from as far away as London, Texas and Florida. More than 20,000 people have viewed websites showing the items. One prospective buyer from Colorado is bringing a semi trailer truck, Hunt said.
“I’ve seen auctions where men go nuts over guns and coins, but that doesn’t compare to women and quilting items,” she said.
Judy Fletcher, owner of the Celtic Quilter shop in southwest Omaha, said that she’d never heard of a collection of sewing machines of that size and would definitely bid on a couple of the machines if she could attend.But Fletcher said much depends on the condition of a machine and its wooden cabinet, if it has one.
For instance, there are “stalkers” looking for portable Singer Featherweight machines because of their popularity with quilters, she said, but their worth can vary, from a couple hundred dollars to several thousand, depending on the year it was made and its “badge,” a sticker on the machine.
The first Featherweight machines, from 1933, can be worth a lot of money, as can “crinkle” models.
“It really depends on the machine,” Fletcher said.
Betty Crocker award
Knapp said her mother didn’t have much when growing up. But she was a skilled seamstress, and at Brock High School, she won a regional Betty Crocker award for homemaking.
“Her family were people who could make something from nothing,” Knapp said.
Bette sewed her own wedding dress and made a lot of clothes for her four children, friends and neighbors. She initially worked as a phone operator in nearby Nebraska City, earning extra money via sewing projects.
Knapp said her mother once sewed a leisure suit for a neighbor, who weighed more than 300 pounds and couldn’t find a suitable sports coat at a store. Boellstorff later worked for a Lincoln wedding dress store, altering gowns for new brides, and she was an avid quilter.
Boellstorff’s husband, Dan, said Bette started collecting sewing machines in the early 1980s. The couple loved going to farm sales, which served as a form of entertainment, according to Knapp.
At such sales, bidding would begin on the farm equipment. At the very end was when a sewing machine might be up for bids, the daughter said.
Dan Boellstorff said he would bring home sewing machines from sales if his wife wasn’t along and would hear about machines for sale. He once bought 30 more-modern machines that were left behind after a St. Joseph, Missouri, shop went out of business.
“I bought her quite a few of them,” he said. “She liked them, and I knew enough about them that I knew what was good or not.”
Singer’s installment plans
Bette likely used every sewing machine she acquired at least once, her daughter said, though her favorites were a Singer Touch & Sew and a Singer Futura.
She liked figuring out how a machine worked. And her husband and a friend from Pawnee City liked to repair the machines when needed.
Most of the machines she collected were made by Singer, the first company to allow the purchase of the then-pricey equipment on installment plans.
Dan Boellstorff said that at age 85, he decided it was time to plot out a future for his wife’s massive collection.
Both he and his daughter said they hope new homes and new uses will be found for the dozens of sewing machines and related items Bette collected over the years.
“Somebody will have them and take care of them,” Dan Boellstorff said.