sewing machine

[peverroad]

i finally get time to sew and it starts messing up!! I have to wait intill my mother in law gets home to look at it. it will go about an inch and then it jams up. when i pull the fabric out there will be a bunch of strings all caught up anyone got any ideas

[JLav]

My sewing machine has been on the fritz too! I have a giant stack of dipes cut out that I'm making for someone else. I keep getting big blobs of thread from the bobbin...so it just looks like crap.
I feel for ya!

[Jes'sBeth]

When I have the thread puke problem (as someone else so aptly described it...) I too generally want to throw my machine off a 20 storey building. Here are the things that help my machine...

1- clean out the bobbin area. It gets fuzzy. Fuzzy is bad.
2- rethread the machine and bobbin.
3- check tension
4- use better quality thread (it gets fuzzy less often and sews better. I would rather spend a bit more on thread and have my machine perform better every time.
5- I have trouble with my bobbin cover. The metal plate that you slide the thread through when you put the bobbin in it comes unscrewed. When it's lose the tension goes merrily out the window and I get thread puke. I should buy another bobbin cover because I seem to have to tighten that screw every few weeks but I haven't gotten out to the store.
6- If all that fails, I find that I need to go away and leave it until later. Sometimes when I come back to it later, I works for me, others not and I have to hunt the problem down but fresh eyes usually help.

80-90% of the time rethreading fixes the problem.

[CarrieMF]

Sounds like a threading problem. Check the bobbin and make sure that when it was wound that the thread went on properly, I often forget to wind it through the top tension first and it makes it loopy. That causes it to bunch up underneath, break the thread, etc. You'd think I'd learn. If that doesn't work, rethread the machine, you may not have caught the tension wheels/slots/dials/whatever they are. If that doesn't work put everything in and then turn the handwheel a few times with the bobbin cover open to see if there is anything funny in there.

[muttix2]

Yep, probably the bobbin. I had that problem a little bit ago and when I got my own machine the guy who gave it to me showed me how to thread it and then I realized that I hadn't been threading the bobbin after putting it in the metal thing. You know, wrapping the bobbin thread through the metal part. Once I remembered to do that I didn't have that problem much anymore. I still get it a few times when I'm backstitching though I have an old machine.