Another thought and I know it sounds silly -- what is your work surface? Another friend of mine just had such terrible results and I knew she had the skills needed -- when I visited for a sewing day it turned out she was sewing on a flimsy card table that bucked up and down like a bronco while she was sewing. We bought a prefinished shelf board at the local hardware store and put that under the machine and just the bit of extra stability helped both machine issues as well as technical skills and was still easy to take up/down.