My Grandmother had one (it was still in working order when I was small); that’s the machine my mom and her sisters all learned to sew on … and in a family with 9 kids, you can bet your bottom dollar they sewed a LOT; sheets, pillow cases, curtains, and clothing! Flour came in calico-print cotton sacks: those bags got pressed into service the moment they were empty.
As a friend who happened to be a history professor pointed out, absolutely factual portrayals of day-to-day life in earlier eras would be filled with tedium and a lot of misery; of course her accounts are fictionalized and romanticized – otherwise no one would ever read them.
I’m glad! The more people who can get protected, the better.