I took matters in to my own capable hands last night. I played with the bobbin tension. ( OMG, Don't tell the tension police!) What I found is still a PITA! I have to increase the bobbin tension to do a straight stitch and decrease it to do any fancy stitches. Just ain't right. So I'll just have to keep my little screw driver handy until I can afford a better machine. It would be interesting to know which machines other quilters have found to work well. $ mid range.

I asked one of the local dealers if I could put my machine on a "list" and bring it in a day or two before t hey would get to it. This sounded like great marketing to me. I was turned down!

However, another store farther away from my home agreed and made an appointment for me to take my machine in. I went for coffee, read part of a book, and browsed the store [and, of course, bought material.]

The moral: Ask ... keep asking ... have all your sewing/quilting buddies ask. Maybe one day they'll understand. If not ... go to another place.

I took my janome to be fixed, droped it off, by the time I got home, I had a call to come pick it up. :lol:
One other time I had a problem, called was told to bring it in, I was looking a round the shop at fabric and what not, and before I was done looking they came and got me and said it was allset, and it needed a part to top it all off. There is only one guy (Dave) in the shop who fixes machines. We are lucky to have this shop, wish you all did. :thumbup:

I must be the luckiest! I have a repair man that will come to the house & fix it! Very resonably priced if he doesn't have the time to stay he will take it to his shop & bring it back in a week! He is very good!

My machine will need a tune up in a year, My dealer has told me if I bring it in he will have it ready the next day. My dealer is in Flagstaff Arizona, he is a dealer for several machines, I trust him totally as I live in Lake Havasu City several hours away from Flagstaff, he has a very good reputation around these parts :thumbup:

No joke. When I was at my dealers today for my "squeaker", I was waiting for an hour and there were 4 other people bringing in machines for service. In one hour. They told me they were swamped and that the wait was at least 3 weeks. I can see why. If there were some on-line sewing machine repair classes, I'd be interested!

I ordered a walking foot for my Viking in October '09 from the
business I bought it from, I am still waiting and here it is Feb 10. It is an older machine and apparently was not in stock, I suppose I am lucky they still make one for it. The shop used to be in our town and was busy all the time but they moved to a bigger town 30 miles away because they could make more money of course. Now they have 3 stores in other towns but we have nothing. Sorry, got off the subject.

When I bought my 930 Bernina many years ago we had a different tension from the top tension when we did embroidery and put the thread in the little hole in the bobbin thingy that sticks out, My new 830 has basically the same procedure, If you have a book with your sewing machine it may tell you about what you need to do about it, for the different kinds of sewing . I was also told to buy prewound bobbins or use serger thread in the bobbin because it is finer or use the same embroidery thread, Also sew a sample and look at the threads , Looking at the sewn threads can tell you if you need to change the bobbin tension or the top tension, the new 830 Bernina has a larger , flatter bobbins so prewound will not work, I also clean my machine after every bobbin fill. Keeps the machine clean and no little fuzzies, I sew just about every day, :XD:

Hopefully they can find one for you. Years ago I bought an end of the year model Viking and a year later decided I could use a walking foot but for that 2 year old model, the store owner was never able to locate one for me and that was a huge disappointment because you really do need a walking foot. Good luck.

Thats a great idea. They are all basically the same, quite simple really. My husband and I are both disabled. I just might look into that. I'll let you know what I find.