I can’t tell you how many of these little sewing gadgets I bought throughout my teenage and young adult years. The ads in the back of magazines for these always made it look like you’d be sewing like a fiend in no time. In actuality, all I did was constantly poke holes in my fingers and make incredibly messy seams and hemlines in all the clothes that I ended up ruining trying to use one of these things.

Just getting the thread in was trouble enough let alone attempting to do the fancy stitches it promised to magically do.

I had no idea what  most of these were supposed to look like in the first place but I’m sure they weren’t supposed to make the fabric pucker and snag the way my projects always ended up looking.

I actually never minded the mistakes because I always loved what these Magic Stitchers looked like –  part fishing lure,  part rocket  and part medical device –  so I ended up saving all of them and eventually used them in some kind of sculpture or art assemblage.

This one was bought from the J.L. Hudson Co., THE department store in Detroit when I was growing up.

Although this wasn’t one of mine but, rather, was acquired more recently on eBay, I remember this box well as Hudson’s is exactly where I used to purchase the multitude of Magic Stitchers that tore up my fingers and had me almost flunking Home Ec.