What NOT to do to your sewing machine

A pin sticking into my machine.  Not good

The same pin after I pulled it out

 This is a lesson in what NOT to do to your very expensive, sweet sewing machine.  What you see in the photo's above is a pin that has lodged itself into the mechanism of my machine.  It happened because I was in a rush to put seams in a very difficult area and used a mega amount of pins (long, sharp pins....) to hold things in place.  Well, one of the pins under my project wedged itself into the machine as I sewed away none the wiser.  That is until all these bells and alarms and red lights went off on my machine and the digital screen said 'stopped to avoid danger'.  Geez!

Look at all that lint!!

I stopped of course and turned all the power off.  Once I removed the fabric from under the needle I saw what was left of the pin sticking straight out.  Off I went to my husbands workshop to get pliers to do some sewing machine surgery.  I was horrified when I removed the throat plate to see tons and tons of lint.  I'm amazed my machine worked so well with almost a full carpet of fibers wrapped everywhere in its guts.  I brushed what I could out and then used tweezers to remove the clumps still deep within.

 

 

 

 

Much tidier after the mountain of lint was removed

I had all my fingers and toes crossed that I hadn't done serious damage to my electronic baby.  After putting all the bits back together I held my breath and stitched a few test pieces.  To my utter amazement the stitching was beautiful.  I then tried my automatic thread cutter and at first, though it worked, it cut the thread either too short on top (which caused the needle to unthread) or the mechanism was too ruff causing the problem.  It cut the thread both top and bottom like it was suppose to but I had to rethread the needle each time.  I decided I needed a break away from the machine.  I called a girlfriend and we went to our favorite quilt shop for retail therapy. 

I came home refreshed and decided to take another look at my Janome. I cleaned her again and gave the thread cutting another go.  Amazingly she worked just fine!  I have to say I have nothing but good things to report when it comes to Janome sewing machines.  I have yet to buy a Janome that has ever died on me (any time I purchased another one it was to upgrade, not because my old one failed).  It has been a steady excellent performer and I highly recommend a Janome to any sewer.  I know when I'm ready to upgrade to a newer machine, it's going to be a Janome (the new Horizon is really making my mouth water whenever I see it....).

OK, I need to jump back into finishing that Show Us Your Knickers charity quilt so I can start my challenging Love Entwined quilt project.