Macybaby

I've had mine for 18 months now. At first I would have loved to disconnect the cutter, but over time I've gotten use to it and rarely cut the thread when I don't mean to. And I use it often enough that I no longer wish to disable it. Though you'd still have it on the front of the machine.

Peckish

I fixed that problem by reducing the number of holes the thread goes through in the tension bar.

Jannie

Thanks ladies for the reminder. I just bought a new Janome with the thread cutter on the pedal. I had completely forgotten about it. I am going to have to try it out and see if I can get used to using it.

Macybaby

why do you need to get ahold of it before you start sewing again? Is it pulling the top thread out of the needle on you? My top thread is about 3/4" past the needle, but the bottom thread stays below, and if I cycle the needle I can get about 1/8" of a inch of it to poke up through the needle hole so I can grab it with tweezers if for some reason I needed to, but there have been very few instances where I need the bottom thread pulled up. When I know I'm going to need that, I try to remember not to use the thread cutter and pull the fabric away and cut manually so I have those threads extended. Usually that is only if I want to tuck tail ends to hide them, but I rarely do that.

Peckish

Probably because if you don't hold both thread tails for the first 2 or 3 stitches, you usually end up with a nest. At least, that's why I hold the tails.

marjben

I picked up a tip to start sewing on a scrap for the first few stitches before feeding in what you intend to sew so any nest happens on the scrap. It works wonderfully for me.
I have a Juki 2010 and love the heel activated snip. I rarely see the bobbin thread, but start with the scrap and have no problems. Actually, the scrap is a help when chain piecing since I use a scrap that stands out from my pieces and it makes the beginning so easy to find in the pile of chained pieces when done.

sydneybean

This is what I do , too. I hate the thread cutter on the pedal.

Macybaby

The only "thread nest" I get on the back side is if I don't pull up the TOP thread after using the cutter. Now I just take the peice I sewed on, and use it to drag the upper thread out of the hole, and make sure it's in a direction so the presser foot will be on top of it when I start the next seam.

Until I got the Juki, I'd always seen on older machines that REQUIRED you to pull the threads up and hang on to them or you'd get nasty thread nests, and sometimes thread breaks. So it was a real new thing to discover I did not need to do that with the Juki. I often use different colored top and bottom thread as I"m using up leftovers from the LA, so it was real easy to discover that the little nests I was getting after using the thread cutter were from the TOP thread. I really like using the Juki a lot more after I figured some of this out. Before that I was making more work for myself.

A year ago I was showing a friend how to use a vintage machine, and her main problem was she kept forgetting to hold the threads before starting a seam. She'd learned to sew on machines that didn't require that step, so it wasn't an ingrained method for her like it was for me.