My thread tensioner went bad, last year. I debated buying another machine, since my Brother rig is about twenty years old, now. Instead, I dug down, took the machine apart, bought a few parts from Amazon, and fixed that little sucker. It sews fine, now, although I have a feeling it'll be giving me more problems in the near future, based on a few new sounds I'm hearing as I sew. For a while, I was sewing pillow shams, for each holiday, for three pillows. That got old, after two years, so now we don't swap them out, anymore.
My grandfather was a tailor, I should say here. He had a very successful shop on Chicago's South Side, and I sat in wonder as I watched my grandmother sew on an old foot treadle Singer. My interest in sewing on a machine was a natural thing, for me. My Mom and sister never got the bug.
My Dad's shop, where he plied his trade as a master electrician, carpenter, and picture framer, got me into those things, which served me quite well when I started buying old houses and fixing them up, solo. My Dad was also a jazz drummer, and that got me into starting my own band, at eleven.
My Mom got me into baking at a very young age, and I got into cheffing by working restaurant gigs in high school.
We are all the sum total of our earlier life experiences, along with what we pick up along the way to our advancing years, right?