This paper is inspired by a "100-year-old sewing machine" that I inherited from my grandmother. The machine came with a long narrative story of its own, showing how dramatically it affected my grandmother's life. Probably no other technological invention has had a more transformative effect upon the lives of women and the household than sewing machine. Since its introduction to the Middle East in the latter half of the nineteenth century, sewing machine came to play a decisive role in redefining the social status of women across the board. Perhaps as importantly, sewing machine also opened up a new channel of technology transfer between Europe and the Middle East. “Singer” as a brand name signifies the unfolding of this twofold process that lasted well into the middle of the twentieth century. Taking its cue from the argument that the tools in our homes are not passive instruments, rather they shape and transform our lives in a reciprocal manner, the present paper aims to study a particular aspect of the process by which “Singer” turned into a modernizing tool in the hands of the Turkish elite and was devised to transform the social status of women. Ten years after its foundation, Turkey had achieved a certain degree of success in remodeling the society after European example; and the Turkish elite with its commitment to modernity had created institutions and launched policies to upgrade the status, particularly, of urban women. Part of this process was training that was given to women in formal and informal institutions about how to use sewing machines. The tightly-state controlled media was full of sewing machine advertisements, encouraging women to buy sewing machines or learn how to use them. For almost three decades, “Singer” became a loaded name; more than a household technology, symbolizing prestige and economic independence for Turkish urban women. Having had a chance to listen to my grandmother’s experience with her hundred-year old “Singer”, I designed an oral history project for my thesis to document and analyze the impact of sewing machine upon Turkish urban women. Based on two dozen interviews, Singer's publications and advertisement materials such as posters, and women's magazines, this paper argues that sewing machine played a key role in the definition and redefinition of the social status of women in Turkey during much of the twentieth century.