jennb

I pulled out my featherweight to try sewing part of a bed skirt on her today. I haven't sewn on her since I got it back in June. The belt on it is brand new (package was in the case) and is an original singer, however I think it may have been ruined from sitting so long. It seems to have a permanent kink in it from where it was sitting around the small pulley by the motor. I adjusted the motor on the dovetail to tighten it a bit but its still slipping a little.

The mystery to me is with the thread. I did get it to start sewing a few stitches but the top thread is not picking up the bobbin thread and I noticed that the top thread is getting wound around the bottom casing that holds the bobbin case. I got some tweezers out and managed to get it all out from there but there were 2 colors of thread down there so i know it has happened before.

I took the thread out of the bobbin and top and followed explicit instructions from the manual and rethreaded both, and it didn't fix the problem. I also took the needle out and put it back in, making sure the flat side was to the left.

Any other suggestions? the only guy that I trust to service my machines charges 67.00 per machine to clean/service and I'm about to make him a very wealthy guy with some of these recent acquisitions so I'd really like to be able to fix at least one of them without spending cash.