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Having read everything above I'm now assuming the bottom of these is the adjustment dial for upper tension? And therefore the upper one is just there to confuse me..   

Same needle for both and it’s brand new.  I think a size 121?  Whatever that means….

I’ll have a look in the sewing box to see where I’ve hidden the other needles, because this packet did look rather chunky.  I’m sure I bought a selection of sizes!

Hello again. I'm back.

Its been a busy few months for me - got hit by a car,  had to quit my job, got hit by a lump of falling concrete, moving house, etc etc - and I've not had time for sewing.

But now its time to start the next project. However, my machine isnt sewing right and I'm not sure how to fix it.

Top stitch looks like this..  [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]  

Bottom like this  [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]  

What is the issue and how is it solved??

I'm assuming that something isn't at the right tension,  but is it too tight,  too lose? Or simply user error...

Thanks for all of the kind comments ladies and gents. 

This will not be the last project - in fact I will soon be posting pics of the dinghy cover, but I think I will be upgrading to an industrial machine.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my singer and will be keeping it, but it’s not tough enough for the jobs I plan on doing.

The dinghy cover has been a real fight.  It looks ok but the singer just doesn’t have the strength to pull that much weight and I’ve had to feed it through by hand, with varying success.  I think I only managed it because I’m a stubborn so and so and wasn’t going to let it beat me, but while the sofa was a pleasure the dinghy cover was a real...... not pleasure.

But the finished result is good enough for what I need - a cover to last a couple of years.  It’s not good enough for the actual boat canopy though.  Not good enough at all.

However, I’ve learned that I will be able to cope with the job and the measurements and the sewing if I have the right tool for the job, so I’m buying one, which sounds extravagant but makes sense.  I think the material costs will be around £1000, maybe a bit more, and the machines look like they come in at a similar price, so call it £2000 - £2500 for the finished canopy which will save me at least a thousand pounds from quoted prices.  I can then use the machine to make new covers and canopies for the top deck, saving me more money, and then sell the machine second hand with little use and probably get back half of the cost...

That’s the plan anyway.

Even my wife thinks it’s a good plan - and she was initially dubious about me spending fifty quid on the singer!  She has a little more faith now it seems...

@Gavin e would you kindly let me know which brand of electric staple gun you have please? Many thanks.

The staple gun I used was a Stanley TRE550 - about £30 on eBay and a great gadget.

@Gavin e , have only just come across your thread, it's good to see another boat owner on the forum. I too have completely reupholstered our boat. If you haven't already seen this site and this
 i can recommend both of them, the chap at Hawke House is very helpful

I’ve already spent money with Pro fabrics.... but hawke house is new to me and well worth looking at.  Thanks. 

I like the idea of a little colour change thread to give me bobbin warning time - but it will only work if I can find something that shows up against dark navy thread on dark navy canvas.  I’ll see what I can find and look up a frixion pen too - never heard of one!

I’m giving the dinghy cover a go - and I’ve deliberately over engineered it to make sure I practice all the techniques I need for the main boat covers.

All is going well, but my question is......

How am I supposed to know when the damn bobbin is about to run out of thread?  It’s happened a couple of times now.  Annoying.

I’ve then been unpicking that bit of work on the assumption that I’m supposed to?  If I don’t I figure I run the risk of it all pulling apart in the future as the end isn’t backsewn or whatever it’s called?

Having to unpick six foot of nice stitches is demoralising...  any handy hints, or do I just need to keep checking and waste the thread when things are running close?

What a lovely idea.  And a lovely result. You sure you have no sewing experience?     :thinking:

If I have any experience it was in a past life...  although I will admit to sewing on the odd button before....

Hello again.

It’s been a while since I posted so I thought I should give a little progress report...

There has been swearing.  Not as much as my wife was expecting, but I must confess to a small amount of profanity from time to time.

I somehow seem to have spent several days online trying to work out just what I need and I have managed to acquire a small mountain of kit.

I have also spent quite a lot of time getting to know my singer 201.  At first i couldn’t get the stitches to work - sometimes they looked great, and then thirty seconds later the machine jammed and I’d have to get the screwdriver out to remove yet another birds nest.  I just could not work out what to do to set the machine up in a way that gave me enough faith in my ability to produce a semi decent stitch every time.

In the end I decided that there must be something wrong - nothing terminal for the machine but something that wasn’t right - so I decided a really good service was required.  I took the thing apart, following several videos that I found on you tube, and during this process noticed that all of the machines they were playing with had the foot tension spring wound down way way tighter than it was on my machine.  This solved my issue with odd length stitches.

I then gradually worked out that my other issue was caused by my cotton reel being too heavy for the spring to really cope with.  I’m not sure if there is a proper way to move thread from a large reel onto a standard smaller reel, but I found that an electric drill on slow speed with the right size drill bit did the job nicely....

I then played with yet more off cuts of fabric until I was happy that things seemed to be working, although by this time I had run out of spare material and was  cutting lengths of fabric to practice on. 

Then it was time to make a start on the boat sofa.  I had planned to start with canvas work because that is all pretty much flat and lots of straight lines to sew - which sounds better to learn on - but I changed my mind for the simple reason that I was told to do the sofa first by my wife.  Well, not exactly ‘told’ but it was made quite clear that she would be a happier bunny if she was looking at a nice new sofa..... 

The first effort was not good.  I tried various things.  More swearing was required.

The sofa is made up of about twenty sections, and the first cushion I covered took a mere five hours... but I have worked out how to do it.  Now each piece is taking about and hour and a half to strip, pattern, sew and staple.  My ‘pin method’ is probably wrong and I am probably making something simple much more complicated than it needs to be, but I think the results are good enough for what we need.  [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]    [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]    [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]  

I’ve managed to complete the first six pieces I bought home, although I do want to re do the first piece I did because it’s not up to standard.

I’m sure that I’ll find more head scratching moments as I try to get the seat cushions covered, but so far I’m happy.

Thanks again to all of those who helped with advice and suggestions, and gave me the belief that this was a project I could look at doing myself! 

Gavin