I had forgotten about assisting on take-off. Like I said in the OP, Home-Ec class was a LONG time ago. I still had hair back then. It's coming back to me.

I gave it a deep cleaning and lube the night before last. It helped a little. Being an old machine it uses a rheostat as opposed to pulse-width modulation to control the motor. I'm thinking about building a PWM control for it just because I have the stuff and that's my other hobbie...mad scientist.

I made a trial "X-Kilt pleat section" out of some cotton scrap I had. It was light shirtweight stuff-a $1 quilting peice I picked up to make flashes from. It was good practice. Basically it's three 2 1/2" box pleats stitched along the edges to hold the pleat, stitched down to the fell, and with a 1 inch waistband and a belt loop. A model-sized piece of the back of a kilt! I was pretty proud of it, but my wife wasn't impressed that I woke her up to show her. I guess it could have waited till morning. Anyhow, it's comming back to me. I'm feeling more confident after having that success with hard to work with lightweight stretchy cloth. I think I'm going to go get some 10-12 oz poly-cotton tomorrow and start on an X-kilt type project with a more traditional look--like one of Matt Newsome's box pleat kilts but with a slightly modern flair. The bug done got me!