Sewing machine doctors, I need your help! My
is sick
(we need an 'ill' emoticon!)
The other night I started sewing a jersey t-shirt, started with new stretch needle, threaded from scratch etc. All going well. The following evening my sewing machine started skipping stitches and was making an odd noise, kind of like it was hitting pins but there were no pins in my fabric. Then the thread kept snapping... I rethreaded it time and time again but still skipping stitches and snapping thread.
I ploughed on as I was going to overlock everything anyway, but then there was a loud crack and the needle snapped into 3 pieces, one hit me in the face. Thankfully not my eye! The stitch selector knob seemed to have been pushed out, too. After that I changed the needle (obviously!) and started with some scrap fabric, but it kept skipping.
Also I had a funny feeling the feed dogs were not pulling through at one point too but couldn't tell if was because of the stretchy fabric? Is that normal?
I've taken the plate off and given it a bit of a dust (wasn't too manky but I have never cleaned in there and I've had this machine for 18 months) and it seems to be behaving better, but still the occasional skipped stitch.
Anyone got any ideas? It's a Janome SMD 6125QC. I've never had it serviced but it's not that heavily used. The only thing that I can think of is that the
may have banged into it as they like to sit on the table next to it, and usually I put it away at the end of the day but this time I didn't. It's in the same room as the washing machine (long story) so also lots of vibrations. Ugh. I don't want to have to get it fixed, I have such a huge backlog already!
Thanks for any insights/ advice!!