Week 168: The Bernina Artista 180

My great aunt Alice, or "Ace" as most of us know her, is an incredible woman. I've been the beneficiary of her generosity with my beloved red 2016 Honda HRV, "Harvey" as she called it, and recently just inherited her Bernina Artista 180 sewing machine, a heavy duty sewing desk, and a bunch of buttons, thread, and needles.

My Aunt Ace was the first person to tell me to never let anyone use my fabric scissors for anything but fabric. She said this was the only thing that would keep fabric scissors truly sharp. My Halmoni (my mom's mom) reinforced this sentiment as well as I remember messing around in her sewing area as a kid. To this day, I live by this rule. My fabric scissors and rotary cutter are specifically labelled and marked with a ribbon and are only ever being used for cutting fabric or thread.

While the Bernina Artista 180 is a very old machine, releasing first in 1998, At the time of purchase in 2001, my Aunt Ace must have paid a pretty penny. I found some receipts along with her detailed research when she was transitioning from her old Elna machine (which we also inherited and I used when I was little). Ace had notes with magazine clippings and printed articles comparing different machines. The Artista 180 seemed to have been the cream of the crop at the time, which is likely why she chose it. I think she must have paid around $3000. For context, $3000 in 2001 is the same as about $5535 in 2026. Even though they don't make this model anymore, apparently it is still highly regarded as a great stitching machine, even without the computerization.

My current sewing machine is a very mundane Singer Start 1304 I got in 2018. The 1304 served its purpose for me in college, but it will soon be sold or donated as I am onto bigger and better. The bigger and better being the Bernina Artista 180, obviously.

Being computerized and capable of hundreds of different stitches and embroidery functions, the Artista 180 machine was one of, if not the first, machines of its time made by Bernina. The original owners manual and workbook are in binders and I plan to study them closely. There is also a 132-page PDF available for download on the Bernina website. I got lucky and found some YouTube videos of instructional VHS tapes from Bernina: this one is about an hour long, while the embroidery-specific one is about 40 mins. Some digging on Reddit also led me to this open source tool for using the now-dated software with today's modern Windows applications. People are so cool. I'm intrigued to see what the machine is capable of, and what I'm capable of. With so many resources online now, I hope I get the hang of it pretty quickly.

A repair invoice from 2018. Aunt Ace kept the machine in perfect condition.

Along with the magazine clippings and printed pages, I also sorted through Ace's detailed maintenance log, mainly from the Sewing Center of Santa Fe. I felt a sense of pride to have such a well-cared for machine now in my hands and it was really cool to see the faded, thin papers covered in Ace's distinct handwriting. I noticed that her and I are similar in that we write in capital letters a lot.

I was explaining to my car-loving boyfriend that the Bernina machine I have is like having an older luxury car, maybe a BMW, that requires special parts and custom tools. The Singer Start 1304 I had is like a standard, base trim Toyota Corolla. I do need to get a universal adapter for snap on presser feet, like this one, since Ace's machine came with only one foot. Most of my presser feet now are generic, and I don't want to get rid of them.

Just like my car Harvey, the sewing machine I've inherited has been well-researched, well-used, much-appreciated, and meticulously maintained. I hope to live up to Ace's standards with taking care of this beast of a machine.

See you next week.