by Krista
Love it, hate it, or something in between? It
got me going, so I feel a little bit of an attachment to it. It gave me
lots of frustration, but some of that was surely my own fault, as an
ignorant beginner who kept forgetting to put down the presser foot
before sewing. Then again, some of it was certainly the fault of this
cheapy sewing machine, which came up with new ways to foil me on a
regular basis until I stashed it to use my 1972 White.
When did you buy this sewing machine? late 2005
When was it manufactured? it was new, so around 2005
Where did you buy it? Target
How much did you pay for it? about $80
How many projects have you done on this machine? approximately 15
Describe the kind of work you've done with it. I
started with baby pouches, repaired heavy-duty items like wrist and
knee braces, sewed a hideous (not the machine's fault) canvas handbag,
two cloth grocery bags, a few little gift bags and pouches, a summer
dress, three skirts, two tops, several pairs of elastic-waistband
toddler pants, a fleece monkey costume, and started working on a sail
cover made of heavy-duty marine canvas called Sunbrella.
What do you like and what do you hate about it?
Thread jams. Seriously, all the time. In fairness, they became rarer as
I used the machine more, so I really do think that I was doing funky
things in the beginning that set it off -- I went through a phase where
I loaded the thread into the bobbin case backward, and that wreaked
havoc; I often forgot to put the presser foot down before sewing, and I
just wasn't very adept at moving certain fabric types through. Still,
it often jammed when I think I was doing everything right, and my White
almost never jams, so I'm pretty sure the machine is highly susceptible
to thread jams.
One of its biggest problems, aside from the thread jams, was that
the plastic reverse lever got shredded inside the machine -- apparently
the mechanism was too tight. Singer sent me a new lever (they did
suggest I return the machine for a replacement, but with a tiny baby
and a complicated living situation at that time, I couldn't drag myself
back to Target in another state), and after doing some complicated
jerry-rigging and being oh-so-careful, I did manage to keep it working
reasonably well. And then one day I decided to drop some sewing machine
oil down in the hole, and, well, the problem was totally fixed. So I
see it as an indication that care was not taken in making the machine
in the first place, but, again, if I'd known my way around a sewing
machine better, I probably could have cleared it up right off the bat
and saved myself a year and a half of grief.
As long as the thread wasn't getting all balled up under the needle
plate, it worked great. The stitches looked good, and it even had
enough power to get through some thick fabrics -- when I was sewing the
sail cover, the needle seemed to go through the heavy canvas without
too much effort, but the overall project was really too heavy for the
feed dogs to move through very effectively. Also, I don't think it had
any way to adjust the presser foot pressure or to lower the feed dogs,
which I've since found to be a handy feature.
