Free Motion can damage a machine!

[BrendaP]

I've been practicing free motion "embroidery" using the Stoppax darner attachment which came with my Aluminium 201 and the hopper foot I bought from Roger.  It needs a lot more practice to really call it embroidery and it's quite noisy as the Stoppax thingie makes the foot bounce up and down.

However, when I replaced these with the regular straight stitch foot, the needle was directly above the toe of the foot and looking at it closely it was clear that the foot was not parallel with the edge of the throat plate, but I couldn't move/rotate it at all, even using pliars.

When I took the face plate off there was a clamp with a screw on the presser bar, just below the pressure spring.  That screw was quite hard to crack, but when it did just a quarter turn was enough to allow the bar and the foot to turn.  So I realigned it, tightened the screw and it's all fine, so feeling chuffed with myself that I was able to work out what was wrong, and put it right all by myself!

[Sewbee]

Good for you being able to fix it!

I don't have a clue how to fix the smallest thing that goes wrong with a sewing machine

[Acorn]

I have bought an interchangeable walking foot for my machine and the picture on the box terrifies me so much I haven't even taken it out yet ...

If I had a bit more time (and a bit less fear) this month I would have entered the 'Face your Phobias' sewalong.

[arrow]

The Stoppax accessories was not among the original accessories for the 201, make sure it's for a low shank machine and all that. Jumping feet and those who work in connection with the needle clamp are not always compatible with low shank attachments in general, I have had this at least two or three times; on my 99 a darning foot ended up dragging the entire presser bar up with the needle movment because the ange between presser bar mount and needle bar clamp wasn't right. There's nothing wrong with presser bar adjustment on my 99. A have similarly broken an Elna darning foot on my 201 for much the same reason; both darning feet were low shank. The original darning foot/embroidery foot for the 201 was #121094. A far as I know it was standard among the accessories for the 201, but the foot most likely missing. If the presser foot bar for some reason was out of adjustment, there would probably be marks from where it originally was positioned.

I have to track down one of the stoppax feet my self, it looks very nice and practial method to get a jumping foot action.

[Barnyard]

I'm not quite sure why you would use the stoppax on a 201 in the 1st place? It is a mechanism designed for machines where the feed dogs cannot be lowered. Just drop the feed dogs and install the spring loaded quilting / embroidery foot? I do have a stoppax and it lives with my 221 but whenever I use it I turn the presser foot tension nearly all the way out. Having said that the amount of quilting or indeed free motion embroidery I have done is close to zero so I could be talking tosh 

Barny

[arrow]

The jumping action improves stitch quality, especially on layers of material, and softer fabrics; less need of a hoop. I think that's the main reason for any jumping foot, and when they stitch with out any foot at all it's usually with a hoop. I know nothing about the finer points of free motion embrodery, just the odd test stitching and darning, but it works.

[BrendaP]

I was using the Stoppax thingie with the original darning foot.  Yes the jumping up and down did make it easier to control the movement of the fabric, but it also allowed the presser bar to move very slightly - not enough to notice whilst the darning foot was attached, but obvious as soon as the regular foot was replaced.

I'll have to reconsider how to set up for free motion.  What I do know is that I have a long way to go to achieve  good results!

[arrow]

The stoppax foot is suppose to make it jump like that, just enough not to mess with tension. I'm not sure if Singer ever approved of the invention. For freemotion there's lots of alternatives, just be carefull on the first tests, as mentioned not all of the low shank jumping feet will behave as they should; you have to track dow the right one for you model.

Brenda, if you have the original Singer darning foot, I don't think the stoppax-fuction will be benefitial to it since it works by adjusting it very close to the fabric surface and the spring action kicks in over bumps and uneveness in the fabric. It took me a while to understand how the spring action worked on this one.

[BrendaP]

I suppose I should really try the original Singer hopping foot alone again.

I didn't like it for free motion quilting - I much prefer the open toe spring loaded foot which goes with my Husqvarna but works well on a 201. 

But for a trial piece of free motion embroidery the Singer foot (with Stoppax thingie) was OK.