Machine Friday - Reader Questions

Here are a few questions that I have gotten from fellow blog readers regarding their sewing machines.

Wendy Finlay

How about what to do when the thread breaks and breaks and breaks even though you change the needle, clean out the lint, mess with the tension and you have to finally thrown your hands up in dispair and go to bed at 11:30 p.m. because you've had it with the blankedy-blank thread :)

Wendy,

To me it sounds like you might have a bad spool of thread.  Sometime thread just breaks no matter what you do.  I would trade it out for another spool and see if that helps.  Thread does get old and brittle.  This is why I would never use old thread in a "good" project that you want to last.  How to tell if thread is old: wooden spool, has a store tag on from years ago, looks old and faded or if you can pull out a strand and it breaks easy, then you know it's old and should not use it. 

Greg Bryson

The disappointment and pitfalls of not threading your machine correctly.

Greg,

The pitfalls of not threading your machine correctly is that you get to do it again. Make sure that you have the thread around your take up lever.  This is the number one missed spot when threading.  How do you know you missed the take up lever? When your thread knots up on the underside of your fabric, or it gets up under your stitch plate.  Another pitfall is when you don't get your bobbin in the tension correctly and it looks as if the bobbin thread is just laying there and not locked in.  Take a look at the following  from Sewing Machine Tech about machine tension.

I don't recommend playing with your tension.  Most newer machines you set your tension and forget it.  If there is a time that you need to play with the tension, you will know when and where to set it.  Otherwise leave it alone, or you will be taking your machine back to your dealer and paying them to reset it.  DO NOT play with your bobbin tension because it's so hard to get it back to normal.  If you do want to play with your bobbin tension, then I would get a second bobbin case for playing around with.  Here again dealer will need to reset and cost you upwards of $100.

If you have any questions you can send them to me at the e-mail address on this blog or Facebook.   Don't forget to blog along with us!  We do like to read what you have to say.  It's all about sharing.



Until next time,