“Every morning I wake up, I brush my teeth, and I sharpen my tongue.” ~ Dorothy Parker

Thea Starr’s favorite Dorothy Parker quote perfectly captures her sass as the youngest of six children. “I’m not a quiet girl,” she says. “Nothing’s happening for me unless I say something.” Parker—the satirist and only woman at the Algonquin Roundtable’s “Vicious Circle” in the 1920s—needed that same boldness. “Could you imagine in that era how sassy you would have to be just to keep up at the table alone?”

Thea’s superpower? Parallel parking. Despite not driving off her property for six years due to an eye condition, she’s confident she could still nail it. The skill comes from age 13, when her father—who ran an auto body shop after his military career—had her move cars and line them up in the yard while waiting for repairs. “I should not have been doing that, but I was. And I got real good at it.”

Her goal for the coming year is decidedly domestic: finishing the endless painting of her dilapidated homestead rambler. “I would love to never paint anything ever again in my entire life,” she sighs. “Approaching 50 is not the era of painting every room in a house. The shoulder starts to hurt after a while.” She’s discovering muscles she didn’t know she had.

If Thea could spotlight one thing, it’s her best friend since 1988—an elementary school teacher in Alaska. “She was smart enough to make these decisions and she still chose to be a teacher. She does the Lord’s work.” Her friend became an educator later in life, and Thea felt every milestone personally. “When she got her teaching degree, I was like, ‘holy crap, I felt like I got the teaching degree too. Yes, we got it!'” She wishes teachers made millions because “that’s what teachers deserve.”

The conversation shifts to Thea’s fascinating work with vintage sewing machines. She currently has 60—up from 54 when she last counted. “Don’t you just need one?” people ask. “Yes, you only need one. But when you are a collector and you hyper fixate on sewing machines, the floodgates are open.”

Her collection serves multiple purposes: some machines are for parts, some she bought to answer viewer questions about specific models she didn’t personally own, and some she just likes. Her favorites are Pfaffs, harder to find in the US but common in Germany and the Netherlands, where many viewers seek her help.

Thea offers advice for buying vintage machines: look for all-metal construction (plastic parts from 1980s Kenmores break easily), check if the wheel turns and needle moves, make sure there’s a pedal and power cord, and verify it has a bobbin (1920s bobbins are hard to find). Metal machines are simpler mechanically and “will last a lifetime.”

Her demographic? Young women inheriting grandma’s 1950s machine who don’t know how to use something without a computer. “You just walk them through and show them what it can do. It’s really amazing to see people light up once they realize they have this machine that can free motion sew—all these great features that are expensive on modern machines.”

The Singer 301 is particularly popular—lightweight but with more capabilities than the famous Featherweight. “It means a little bit more business,” Thea explains. Her own Singer 306 from the 1950s? “It can probably sew concrete to a pair of jeans.”

Thea also practices tsumami kanzashi—a Japanese art of hand-folded silk flowers worn by maiko and geisha. When getting married in the early 2000s, she wanted to represent her Asian culture with a hair ornament. Unable to find one, she bought a Japanese craft book and figured it out herself. Twenty years later, she still gets requests and still learns something new with each piece. “I will never know everything about this art. I just enjoy it for my own mental gymnastics.”

Her YouTube channel (@TheaStarr) is where she shares it all—earning her the nickname “the repairist.”

About Thea Starr
Thea Starr is a sewist, vintage sewing machine repairess, and designer working from her workshop in the woods at the edge of a bog in rural Washington. The youngest of six and self-taught maker since 2003, she specializes in vintage fashion and machine restoration. Thea shares her knowledge through YouTube tutorials and runs Six by Six Art Company with her husband, creating custom laser-cut products for clients ranging from local Seattle businesses to NASA.

Website: www.theastarr.com
Instagram: @thea_starr
YouTube: @TheaStarr
Email: thea@theastarr.com

About Tracy Crowley
Tracy Crowley has always been an entrepreneur. Whether it was making gowns for fellow Army wives, taking portraits in black and white, or working on her other businesses, she is always learning something new.

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