Thursday, March 3, 2011

Broken sewing machine

What a week!

One of the crowning moments was when my machine totally hosed on me.  A friend came over to help me pin the quilt I'm currently working on and at some point I started setting up my machine.  I'm so clueless about sewing/sewing machines that I didn't realize my needle placement and stitch size could be altered.  I also knew I needed to change my tension.  So since I needed a scant 1/4" seam allowance (it was set at 1/2") and larger stitch length (5mm would be fine, I was at 2mm) I followed the manual's instructions on how to change the settings.  I put in a scrap of the same cloth I was using for the quilt and proceeded to break two needles.  As if that wasn't irritating enough, my thread then kept bunching at the bobbin.  After lots of looking in the manual and online, we think the problem is with the bobbin case, which has been scratched by the breaking needles.  That's a big worry as broken needles are not too rare around here and an unusable bobbin afterwards (with a $35 part replacement) will be very, very bad.

I'm taking the machine in today for repairs (just getting a diagnosis won't be cheap) and they say it will take at least two weeks until it's repaired.  *sigh*

I'm assuming I'll eventually get this quilt finished....

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Well, looks like a piece was completely missing from the bobbin case.