Wait just a minute here!

My featherweights are supposed to sew perfectly, all the time, right?  Well, Judy, my FW that I use all the time here in the UP, just wasn't acting right after I got her home from the retreats.  In fact, she was acting horrible.  I set her up just like she was before I left and I started to sew.  Well, I tried to sew.  She started skipping stitches and not just a little bit. 

Wait just a minute.  I took the tension off and cleaned everything at retreat and I took the bobbin assembly all apart and cleaned that, too.  I knew I had put everything back together correctly.  So what's the problem?  I did all the steps that I tell people to do when they have skipped stitches.

1- take the thread off and re-thread everything.

2- Check that the finger is in the valley of the throat plate.

3- Check to see that the flat side of the needle is on the left.

4- Check to see that the needle is threaded from right to left.

Okay, all that checked out.  I knew it would.  But, still stitches were horrible.  Okay, when did I last change my needle?  I couldn't remember so I changed it.  Still, nothing different.  Urgh!!

So all the usual reasons for skipped stitches were fine.  I guess I needed to check the needle timing at this point.  I watched the stitch being made and could see pretty quickly that the needle and the hook weren't linking up like they should.  And, when I checked out the needle bar timing I found out that the needle bar was set too far down.  So, I fixed that.

Wow!  Judy is stitching okay again.  Wait.  she's stitching when I am sewing two pieces of fabric together but when I go over a seam, she's skipping again.  Okay, I needed to check the hook/needle line up once again.  And there was the problem.

At some point someone had adjusted the needle bar timing to match up with the incorrectly set main shaft timing.  So, it worked before but when everything was taken apart, cleaned, and put back together, the incorrect setting took over and Judy didn't like it even a little bit.

She's all fixed now.  Both the main shaft timing and the needle bar timing are correct and Judy is sewing up a storm.

When you all tell me your machine was working better before cleaning, I guess I understand now.  There is probably something that was 'off' before and now your machine is letting you know there's something 'off'.  You probably wouldn't know exactly what to check.  Sometimes I know quickly and other times I have to think about things and check out issues one at a time.  Sometimes I even have to call the techs at the Featherweight shop.  But, it gets figured out in the end.

Aren't you glad you have a sewing machine that can be fixed so easily?  I'm glad that I know how to fix them.