The 401 I brought home a little over a week ago was not doing very well on the decorative stitches either. Everything was just a little sticky and gummy. I oiled it, and gave my dd (she's 7) a basket of scraps to play with. After she stitched and played around with the stitches for an hour or so - it does a pretty good zig-zag, it still misses a zig here or there though. I haven't had her doing anything but straight stitches since - maybe today I'll see what happens if I try the decoratives. I know at some point I'm going to have to get in there and really clean everything - but until it warms up enough to do it outside...