My Husband Won't Let Me Get a New Singer - Or, How to Clean Your Machine

This is one of my favorite things in my house:

My mom bought it for my a couple years ago for Christmas and I use it at least five days a week, making all this stuff. My husband, though I love him dearly, doesn't really understand the lure of fat quarters and JoAnn's Red Tag Sale. So when I told him I needed a new machine, he wanted to know why: The feed dogs aren't pulling through, the buttonholer doesn't buttonhole, the zig zag skips constantly, the tension is whacked, and it squeaks. Didn't matter. He was convinced I didn't need a new one. So, I decided to pull it apart and clean it, and if a few little parts happened to break, then I would definitely need a new one!

Turns out it's a good thing I did! And if you're husband is a big old meany-head as frugal as mine, here's how I did it.



On my machine there are two screws that hold the cover over the needle mechanism:

Once you take these out, here's what you see:

Eww, right? I used a small slant-edged paint brush and a pair of tweezers to pull out all this fluff. I paid special attention to where the thread goes through.

There's the giant thread chunk I pulled out of the wheel! Yikes! Maybe that was my tension issue, huh? And here's how much fluff I got out of the top half:

Then I moved on to the bottom. There's two screws that hold the plate down and I used the little doohicky that comes with the machine to undo them. If you take the needle and presser foot off, it's easier to work down there without stabbing yourself.

Now make sure you're not eating anything for this next pic:

Holy crap! I know it's only thread, fabric, and dust, but it looks like I've got a serious mold problem! I used the paintbrush and tweezers to get this all cleaned out, too. Make sure and get way down in the crevices with the tweezers - it tries to escape down there. Remove the black wheel-thingy to clean out the well under the bobbin.

My feed dogs were literally packed with it:

That's just out of the dogs! Here's out of the whole bottom half:

It's so much prettier now!

Before putting everything back, I used the sewing machine oil from Walmart - I think it's a bout two bucks - and my paintbrush to oil up all the levers and moving parts.

Now you're ready to put it back! Make sure you remember to put the bobbin holder back in before putting on the plate. Run your needle a couple times to make sure it's sitting in there right.

After putting needle, foot, and all the covers back on, I used a tiny piece of pre-quilted fabric to sew lines on until the thread came out white again. It's hard to tell in the pic but the first few lines, the thread was pretty grungy from all that oil.

And voila! Suddenly I can do buttonholes and zig zags and not worry about snapped and bunched thread! Totally worth it (although I haven't told Andy he was right, yet. I may save that bit of information...).