annesthreads

Thankyou all for your help. I had to walk away yesterday, but I sat down this evening and had another look. I found a very well hidden, very solid ball of fluff under the bobbin holder, so got that out, had another general dust round, rethreaded bobbin and upper thread using the manual to be sure I had it right, changed the needle - and something solved the problem. I'm very relieved. It underlined, though, how much more reliable these older machines are: this sort of problem is routine with my modern machines, but it seemed unthinkable that something should go wrong on the Featherweight!

MFord

So glad you figured it out!

celwood

Check your tension. This was happening to me until I checked and fixed my tension

oldtnquiltinglady

This happened to me yesterday when I was sewing with my trusty 201. Discovered a burr on the needle, changed the needle, and could not get it to sew a whole seam without breaking the thread.....GRRRRRRRRRR, tried again, and again, and gave up and came in the house. I'll mess with it some more today; I figured out maybe I used a bad needle to replace the bad one; so I'll search until I find a Singer needle, and maybe use a l6 instead of a 14.

Cari-in-Oly

Using a Singer needle may be your problem. It's been a long time since Singer needles were any good. I don't even use Shmetz any more, I buy Organ needles in bulk to use in all my machines.

Cari

oldtnquiltinglady

Thanks for the heads-up, Cari. I think I have some Organ needles here from a long time ago for use in a Brother that I was using for awhile. I might even have brought some back with me from the Philippines in 1966--seems like that was all I could find while we lived there.

ArchaicArcane

annesthreads - your other machine, does it normally stop with the needle up automatically? I ask because a machine that comes unthreaded right at the beginning of the seam was usually started with the take up lever down. When you start sewing, the take up lever yanks the thread out of the needle. When we're used to machines that stop with the needle up all the time, these vintage machines can seem pretty persnickety.

Every time I go from my longarm - which can stop with needle up or needle down but I often set it to needle up - to one of my vintage machines, I find myself re-threading the needle a few times before I reprogram myself and make sure the needle's up before I start a seam. As a bonus, it usually helps with fabric removal too because the stitch is finished forming instead of the needle thread still being half way around the bobbin case.