Sewing Machine Woes

While I have been using a sewing machine since I was in middle school when I took a Home Economics course I am not by any means a genius at sewing. I have used my inexpensive Singer Simple sewing machine on and off over the years but continue to run into the same problems repeatedly. Fabric not wanting to run through, bunching and then the bottom side of the fabric having what seems to be a rats nest on it. Right around when that happens the needle starts to sound like it's about to snap off or a weird tapping sound. It makes me think my sewing machine is going to die and don't get me started on how it reacts to trying to do pleating or sewing my husbands patches onto his military uniforms. I had to go out and get denim needles for those.

Well it started doing that gathering and piling of thread at the bottom and then wouldn't move or sew at all. After some attempts to fix it by turning knobs that I had no idea what they really did (I have no idea where my manual is! I'm terrible I know lol) I went and accessed my knowledge base. My Facebook friend's list which is full of SCA people some who are Laureates, some like my grandmother have just been sewing for ages, and friends who learned from their moms and they know their stuff. The consensus came to that I was probably having some problems with my tension.

I went and checked out a couple of youtube videos and also a couple on how to clean my machine. I decided that the first thing I need to do was to clean my machine since I had never done that and I've had this machine for years. So now I have a sparkly clean machine and then I re-threaded my machine and set to testing which settings gave me what I wanted. It seemed to work for a while but I still had hiccups like the needle made a weird little jump and there was extra thread at the back which looked like it was pulled from the bobbin chamber. It kept doing other things too but only once in a while and it still did the job it was supposed just not so well.

I have every intention of going to buy a new sewing machine when we get our tax return and my budget is pretty good. I've had recommendations of getting a Janome or a Brother. I want a digital because honestly I'm not good at putting the settings on what they need to be for the particular cloth I'm using. I mean sure I'll learn the longer I'll sew but why not give myself a step up? Hopefully soon I'll be using a brand new beautiful machine where I've actually read the booklet. Then I can sew anything I want!