Dr. Dave's Sewing Machine Hospital

05/12/2026

When my business was still active, I purchased this Viking 105 from a long-time customer. She was an elderly quilter, whose hands no longer permitted her to pursue the hobby. I was recently asked if I had a machine suitable for a young person who is just starting to sew, so I fetched this one out of the basement and got it cleaned and oiled. Since it had been well maintained by me, it needed only minimal work.

The only aggravation in the Viking 105 "Electronic" is that the stitch selection indicator is built into the front cover, and has to be re-synchronized every time you take the cover off and put it back on. The indicator is a bright yellow toothed plastic strip which shows through clear holes in the front panel. It's driven by a gear on the stitch selector shaft. In the 3rd photo you can see the plastic strip dangling behind one of the holes in the cover.

Over my career, I learned :
1) to pull off the selector k**b and use a Sharpie to mark the relative position of the indicator strip and the gear, before taking off the cover.
2) to put the cover back on, then use 2 sets of tweezers to reach into the stitch selector's hole. One tweezer pushes away the spring strip that presses the indicator strip against the gear. The other tweezer can then move the strip tooth by tooth to get it into the proper relationship with the gear. Finally the selector k**b can be reinstalled.

02/18/2026

Mrs. Former Doctor got this flyer in the mail recently. Not sure I remember ever getting sewing machine promotions in the mail before. It got me thinking about machine pricing. How much should you pay for a new machine?

Here's my thoughts. Take them with a grain of salt - I've been away from the topic for a while, and I don't know how much tariffs have affected pricing.

$49-$150 - don't go there. Cheap machines are not well built and may just lead to frustration.
$150-$300 - OK if you are only doing occasional light repairs or are not sure if you are going to seriously get into sewing.
$300-$800 - Probably the sweet spot for most users that are seriously pursuing quilting, garment making, and hobby sewing. This is where you'll get a good balance of quality, usability, and versatility.
$800-$2000 - Look in this range if you need specific capabilities such as a larger harp space, a built-in dual feed mechanism, or embroidery capability.
Above $2000 - Think long and hard about what you really need and what you can really afford. How sad will you be when the $5000 computerized wonder is killed by a power surge while you are still making payments?

Don't be dazzled by:
- Lots of fancy stitches. Realistically, you'll never use more than an handful.
- Lots of odd presser feet that you'll rarely need.
- Lots of computerized features, especially if they require an internet connection or a subscription. Computerized machines can do some wonderful things, but they also tend to be delicate and expensive to repair.

09/23/2025

If you want to encase the raw edges of a fabric seam, you could use a serger. But perhaps you don't have a serger, or don't want the hassle of setting one up. You can do the job with an overcasting foot on your regular zig-zag machine.

The foot will have one or more metal pins that the zig-zag stitch will straddle. The fabric is positioned so that the raw edge is aligned with this pin. The pin serves to catch and support the stitches which pass around the edge of the fabric, and prevents the sideways tension of the thread from causing the fabric to bunch up.

The metal pin is secured only at the front end of the presser foot, which allows the stitches to fall off at the back end as the fabric advances. You really can't reverse the stitch direction (as in back-tacking) with this kind of foot.

Since the foot has a metal pin or wire potentially in the path of the needle, you must carefully check and adjust both needle position and zig-zag width controls to ensure the needle can't strike the metal parts. It's advisable to check this by slowly advancing the machine using the handwheel as you observe the needle movement.

The last picture is of the overcasting foot "C" supplied with some Janome machines. It sports two metal wires and a nylon brush. The brush can act as the reinforcing element at the fabric's edge, and if the needle hits it, the bristles just get shoved aside. Two additional wires allow something fancier than a plain zig-zag stitch to be used; the electronic Janome machines have a dedicated "overedge" stitch intended to be used with this foot.

08/01/2025

This video from Sewing Machine Repair Guy demonstrates a number of user-induced problems which can make a perfectly good sewing machine act like it's completely out of whack. It's a great list of things to review before you conclude your machine needs service.

He covers things like:
- poor bobbin winding
- use of the wrong bobbins for your machine
- improper selection of spool cap for the style of thread spool you are using
- improper threading, e.g. missing the take-up lever or the tension discs
- inadvertent dropping of the feed dogs

Solving common issues when your sewing machine won't sew correctly. Especially if the sewing machine is new.Affiliate link to Sewing Parts Online: https://sh...

06/13/2025

Be Happy! It's National Sewing Machine Day!

I was sifting through an old box of odds and ends and found these funky needles.

The double and triple needles make two or three parallel rows of stitching on the top side of the fabric. This requires two or three spools of top thread. Because there's still only one bobbin thread, the backside of the project will be a sort of messy zigzag. Many machines have provision for two thread spools, and will often have a divider disk between the tension disks. This allows two top threads pass on either side of the divider, ensuring each thread gets equal tension without interference from the other thread.

I've never seen a machine which is really set up for three-thread sewing.

Double needles are available with different point styles for different fabrics, and various spacings between the needles. I've never sewn with these needles, but as a sewing machine technician, I would use a double needle to check and adjust a machine's needle bar orientation. The two needles make it easy to ensure that the needle bar is square to the needle slot in the needle plate.

The wing needle, or "hemstitch" needle is used to create oversized holes in open-weave fabrics for decorative effect. The wings shove the fabric's threads aside to create a visible opening - think baby dresses, borders on linen napkins, etc.

The real oddity, which I had not know even exists, is at bottom right, the "double hemstitch" needle. It is a wing needle paired with a standard needle, creating parallel rows of stitches, one normal, and one making the decorative holes.

05/08/2025

I might have a buyer for this Janome HD-1000, so I've been oiling and testing it.

This is a pretty basic but sturdy machine for general sewing and repairs. Its got a front-loading bobbin and a metal body. I'd say it's better built than some other models on the market which claim the "heavy duty" title, such as the Singer HD-4### machines. Not that those machines are bad machines, but this one's better. The stitch selection is limited to utility stitches which would be used for garment sewing, and there's limited control over needle position and stitch width.

04/15/2025

I thought this was a pretty interesting article. It's about a nurse anesthetist who created a quilt design, then turned the idea into a growing side-business called Legit Kits. The company sells an impressive line of pictorial quilt kits which use the foundation paper-piecing (FPP) method. This is a quilting technique in which the patchwork fabric pieces are stitched onto a printed foundation - usually paper, which is removed after each block is assembled and trimmed

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/31/legit-kits-ceo-lucrative-quilting-side-hustle-easy-for-beginners-to-start.html

It's interesting from a business perspective, because although his business has more than a million dollars in annual sales, the founder is not a millionaire and has not quit his day job. By the time he pays salaries and expenses, it's not much more than a break-even proposition. A good thing to think about if you want to get rich through some side hustle.

It's also interesting to visit the business's web site at legitkits.com. The kits are not inexpensive, and it's understandable when you see how elaborate they are: pre-printed foundations, fabric, per-block assembly instructions, fabric color keys, fabric cutting diagrams, etc. They certainly don't seem like beginner-level kits, and I'm guessing the big challenge is not so much the sewing as it is just keeping the hundreds of pieces organized.

Nurse anesthetist Mike O'Dell started drawing quilt patterns on his kitchen floor in 2018. Now, his side hustle Legit Kits brings in over $1 million per year.

02/24/2025

Here's another novel use for sewing machines: musical performance art. A woman in Germany named Lisa Simpson (no, not THAT Lisa Simpson, the other one) uses sewing machine, fabric, and various sound-producing gadgets in her improvisational performances. Musically, I'd say it falls into the realm of space music, or soundscapes, or ASMR. Or cacaphony - it's your call. Traditional musicians like Taylor Swift and J.S. Bach do not need to be worried.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/feb/22/germany-sewing-machine-ensemble-dressed-in-sound-sharper-than-a-needle

For a sample of the artist's work, here's a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1ZQoeqvfkc&t=3s

This weekend, a symphony of Singers (not that kind) will lead an experimental performance that stitches together feminism and fashion – and offers the audience free repairs

01/28/2025

This video from Sailrite explains that if you always start sewing with your machine's take-up lever at the top of its travel, you won't have to worry about holding onto your thread ends. It's true, and it's good advice. With a non-computerized machine, you may have to advance the handwheel by hand to leave the take-up lever in the right position, but that becomes habit pretty quickly.
https://youtu.be/sXLYozgzVXE?si=h9KiKi6o_ZodaQWl

The only exception I take to this is that the video implies (and the viewer comments confirm) that this is somehow new news, even to the people at Sailrite. This is something I figured out within a few days after buying myself a mechanical machine, something I explained to my customers, and something I mentioned on this page, as in this posting from 2020: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18tZMLFDSh/

How could Sailrite not know this? They are a sewing machine company - sheesh!

Some additional factoids: The point at which the take-up lever is at its highest is not quite the same as the point when the needle bar is at its highest - The take-up will top out just after the needle reaches its highest point and has descended slightly. Electronic machines with needle up/down controls will stop at this position precisely because it makes starting the next seam easier and minimizes the chance of thread nests, etc. Despite all this, it's still not a bad idea to hold your thread ends when starting seams where appearance matters, just so the thread ends (particularly the one on the underside of the fabric) don't end up where you don't want them.

Watch our clever sewing trick for an easy way to not hold your trailing threads when you begin sewing. Believe us — it works! Not only that, it works on ALL ...

11/14/2024

The video by Cornelius Quiring linked below discusses five useful sewing tips. The one which caught my attention involves stitching sharp corners which are intended to be turned inside-out. Typically, you might sew to the exact corner location, leave the needle down, pivot the fabric 90 degrees, then sew the second side. Then you might trim off some of the excess bulk before turning the project inside-out.

But as C. Q. demonstrates, the final turned-out corner will actually end up sharper if you stitch to a point just shy of the corner, pivot 45 degrees, take one stitch in the diagonal direction, then pivot the addition 45 degrees before stitching the second side.

This is something I did not know, and would not have discovered intuitively. The explanation seems to be that having a stitch in the exact corner constrains the fabric and makes it harder to "poke out" into a sharp corner, whereas the diagonal method moves the constraints away from the corner and lets the fabric "poke under" the diagonal stitch.

https://youtu.be/LDvXZFuQsos?si=nAJqDSlpIwelHOwt

11/01/2024

And I thought there were too many sewing machines in my house...

Nebraskan Bette Boellstorff amassed a collection of antique sewing machines that topped more than 300 machines.