Originally Posted by
josykatz
I'm very new to quilting and sewing. I've been borrowing my mothers sewing machine to work on which is nice but I really wanted one of my own. During the Black Friday specials Amazon was selling the "SINGER 4423 Heavy Duty Model Sewing Machine With Metal Interior Frame and Stainless Steel Bed plate" for $99 there was only few left and the sale was ending in 15 min so my husband bought it for me.
It has a top loading bobbin, 3 needle positions, drop down feed dogs, automatic needle threader and sews 1,100-stitches-per-minute. I kind of wished I had read the reviews before we bought it, but it was in the fever of black Friday madness and fear on missing a good sale.
I'm having trouble getting it to work properly and my free motion stitches are really bad. The first time I dropped the feed-dogs they stayed dropped and I had to take apart the bed plate to reach inside to push them back up so they would engage. It has stitch length, stitch width, and stitch tension dials. I've tried all variations of each. I've read that either it is fantastic or a dud. Apparently Singer no longer makes their machines in the US they have them made in China.
I'm really bummed and hope I can get it fixed or working properly. Being such a new sewer I'm not sure if it is me or the machine, but I was doing well on my Mothers machine.
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Have you sat down with the manual and the machine in front of you and gone through the entire manual for each of the different functions your machine is meant to perform. As to the feed dogs, if this machine works like my Futura 350, once you lower the feed dogs and then raise them again, you have to turn the hand wheel to re-engage the feed dogs. Check the manual to be sure you are threading the top of the machine and the bobbin case properly. Just a few thoughts I've encountered when getting used to a new machine.