Home sewing machine repair and servicing.

Most home machines that get abandoned are not broken. They are out of adjustment, badly threaded, full of lint, or fitted with the wrong needle for the fabric. A service brings them back, and a machine that has been set up properly is a completely different thing to sew on.

Machines we work on

Domestic sewing machines and overlockers of every make, mechanical and computerised. Older all-metal machines — which are very often worth keeping, because they were built better than most of what is sold new today. Bring the foot pedal and the power lead with it.

What a home service includes

Strip down and clean out the lint, which is almost always worse than the owner expects. Oil the right points and nothing else. Re-time the hook. Set top and bobbin tension. Check the feed dogs, the presser foot pressure and the needle bar height. Replace the needle. Then a test sew, on light and heavy cloth, to check it behaves across the range.

Faults you can often fix yourself first

Before you bring a machine in, try these. Re-thread completely with the presser foot up — the tension discs are open then, and closed when the foot is down, which is the single most common cause of a machine that suddenly “stops working”. Fit a new needle, the right type for the fabric, flat side to the back. Take the bobbin case out and clean the lint from underneath it. If that fixes it, we have saved you a call-out and you will bring us the real job next time.

Check your tension before a new project

Whenever you move to a different weight of fabric — denim one week, silk the next — sew a test line on a scrap of the same cloth first and adjust the top tension to suit. To see which way the tension is out, try this. Fold a scrap, and sew a line across the bias using one colour of thread on top and a different colour in the bobbin. Hold the stitching between thumb and finger at two points about three inches apart and pull sharply until a thread snaps:

• If the top thread breaks, the top tension is too tight.
• If the bobbin thread breaks, the top tension is too loose.
• If both break together, and it takes real force, the tension is balanced.

Is it worth repairing?

Sometimes not, and we will say so. A budget machine with a failed main board is usually uneconomic. A well-built older machine with a timing problem almost always is. We would rather tell you honestly and lose the job than take money for work that does not make sense.

Reconditioning

We also recondition machines that have been sitting unused for years, in a loft or inherited from a relative. Bring it in and we will tell you what it needs.