When my mom immigrated to the United States in 1979, she opened up a sewing shop. She used to sew clothes for JCPenny's and I remember being out there when I was a kid and just watching her sew and helping out whenever I can. Flipping shirts, folding, etc.
Well, she sold the sewing shop a few years later and opened up her restaurant. Which is still open today, and we're actually celebrating our 18th year anniversary this month. =)
Anyhow, we kept one of the machines we had but it's just been in storage. And we lost one of the parts through several moves. But my mom finally decided to fix it up again for me to use.
We got it up and running today and I've been practicing on it. It's a huge professional sewing machine and wow. It's a big difference from my lil dinky one. It sews insanely fast and it took some getting used to. But I'm getting the hang of it.
You can see from the picture, the white one on the left is mines and it's just a small portable one that you can put anywhere. But the big blue one is actually attached to the table/stand and it's quite heavy.

I just think it's really cool that I get to use the same machine I remember watching my mom use when I was a kid.