Well I hope everyone else has been having a better time than me with sewing over the past few weeks. I have managed to sew a couple of items but only wovens. Even that has come to a standstill the last week or so.
It all began with sewing knits:
I have two overlockers. One I bent the upper looper and possibly also lower looper on years ago and the repair mans call out before even looking at it was so much I decided to just buy a new one. I bent the loopers back but the tension has never since been good enough for knits. Its not too bad for the edging on cottons and wovens though so I kept it.
Then when I made my most recent sweatshirt - grey glitter with mitts - well ages ago now - I got it all jammed up. That was the newer of my overlockers. I changed the blades though the old ones seemed fine because it jammed and would not cut. It did not fix the problem!
After several weeks of fiddling with the thing I asked my partner for help. I spent the past 4 days with the help of my partner trying to work out what exactly needs adjusting or replacing. Finally it works after working through the entire manual. It was actually the screw on top that finally made it work right though it was a long process of trying out different things to get the tension and cutting correct againand often undoing what we had altered and then redoing it in different orders. But it works!
I tried it out doing some test stitching and it does seem to work now. I have yet to actually try to make anything but the overlocking tension seems ok for now at least.
But during all this time I have been sewing wovens. And yes perhaps I favour the knits too much because have a huge stash of woven fabric that I do not seem to make much from so maybe its time to try to use some up. Especially since its sumer and woven cotton is nice then and auguably more comfortable than jersey.
So here I am sewing some woven fabric and the machine has sent the tension out here as well. Bearing in mind I rarely use this machine - its a basic Janome that has never gone wrong in any way before - but I also have a very old Brother that I use more often - mainly because the newer Janome will not sew with a twin neeedle and as I said I seem to like sewing with knits best. Anyway this just seems so unreasonable that this machine also will not sew correctly.
So now I spent most of today trying to get that right again. I did some zigzagging this morning on the edge of a bra top ( that ones jersey though and the last thing I managed to sew before my "newer" overlocker gave up on me, so before any of the above described fixing came about) and yet again the tension is out even after spending hours adjusting it. Ah its so frustrating!
Its not like I do not clean or oil the machines because I do. I am though now seriously considering paying the rather extortionate call out fee for the sewing machine repair guys and getting them to look at ALL of my machines and give them all a service or whatever they need. Thats assuming I only have to pay the call out fee once though! I have not yet asked. It worked out last time that it was just cheaper to spend £200 ( so loads!) on a new machine.
Seriously how do they stay in business when they charge so much!
Ah well rant over and it would appear that actually I have managed at last to repair my Janome myself. Its taken most of 4 weeks of fiddling around but all my machines are now working again so maybe I can actually get some serious sewing done at last.
Bracken
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