The Janice Joplin 1951 Featherweight! HD 720p

Bill, the Featherweight Guy, shows the 1951 Singer 221 Featherweight, a Centennial model, that he recently restored and repainted. This machine has a very interesting history connected to Janice Joplin. In the early 1960's, while Janice was a student at the University of Texas, she and her good friend Rosemary opened a custom clothing store on Congress Ave in downtown Austin called the House of Medusa, where they made and sold custom garments. This Featherweight was the machine they used in that shop. Bill purchased it from Dawn, Rosemary's daughter. Janice Joplin had also been a babysitter to Dawn in those years, sometimes singing and playing her guitar to entertain Dawn.