Earlier this week, there was an interesting post on the Colette blog entitled, “Can sewing make you a happier person?”. I had an experience a few days ago which taught me that a lack of sewing definitely makes me an unhappier person.

I’ve been on leave from work and I spent a lot of time last week sewing up a muslin for a dress pattern. All was going fine until my machine started to make a weird noise as I was sewing. Normally it sounds lovely and smooth, but this was like a grinding noise coming from inside the machine.

I consulted the manual which suggested there might be lint caught in the machine workings, so I opened up the needle plate and removed the bobbin and bobbin holder. I gave the feed dogs and the hook race a good clean and put it all back together. No joy. There was still a grinding noise and looking at the machine innards it seemed that the hook race was scraping as it turned.

I was so upset. I spent a sleepless night worrying about what to do. The machine is still under guarantee so I would have to call Janome and ask their advice. I fretted that it might involve – horror of horrors – sending my machine away for repair so I would have to face being without it for a while.

I got up in the morning and I decided to do one last internet trawl to see if anyone else had experienced the same problem with a Janome 7025. Lo and behold I found a post on a sewing forum describing the exact situation I was having and the cause was that the switch on the foot pedal was set to ‘low’ instead of ‘high’. I changed the switch on my foot pedal and my machine was back to normal. I was so happy I hugged it!

I’d been changing between my sewing machine and my overlocker as I worked on the dress muslin. I’ve got a small sewing table, which means I have to put one machine on the floor whilst I use the other and I have to swap the foot pedals around. I must have accidentally nudged the switch on my sewing machine foot pedal to ‘low’ at some point.

There is nothing in my manual about the switch on the foot pedal so I am mystified as to its’ purpose (other than worrying the life out of me). This episode has taught me two things: firstly, I am totally addicted to sewing and secondly, I need to find out the name of a good sewing machine repairman just in case.

BTW my dress form arrived on Monday last week and I’m very pleased with it indeed! Hurrah for Ebay proceeds!

About these ads