To change needles

Thanks for the "Safety Warning." The Rowenta warnings are only slightly worse than the warnings on the soft drink and vending machines telling you that if you tip them over, you could suffer bodily harm. Who would have ever thunk that, lol. I'm glad you and your DH were able to retreive your needle. I'm afraid my DH would not have had a clue, and he would have told me to just take it in to the sewing machine shop. Did I mention that he is not handy around the house - he can change a light bulb as long as he doesn't have to look up to change it. It usually makes him dizzy to have to look up for any length of time. It's a long way to the ground when you are

Sherry Starr

On Saturday I did the exact same thing with my Viking; thank goodness for tweezers and magnifying glasses or the dang needle would still be there! :)

-Irene=20

That sounds like about as much fun as spending three hours on the phone with tech support .... :S

You weren't taught to put a scrap piece of fabric over the feed dogs, put the presser foot down to hold it in place and then take the needle out? More often than not the needle will fall straight down and go just far enuf into said fabric to keep it from running away to unwanted places.

Sandy, if I had to sell DH and the gators to pay a computer geek, I'd have to do it. I simply can not go through 3 hours of tech support again. Recently on the tv news they told about a class action suit against one of the big companies for giving all their customers the hold and/or disconnect run-around. Yes. Yes. Good for them. Polly

"Sandy" That sounds like about as much fun as spending three hours on the phone

My Viking dealer had a machine brought in for repair - the machine was approx 20 years old - needle had never been changed. Customer couldn't figure out why the machine wouldn't sew. The needle was so worn, it wasn't picking up the bobbin thread!

No, I was never taught that...yet that is such a simple yet ELEGANT solution and one I shall use from now on!

Thanks for sharing.

-Irene

Just wish I could remember more of what she taught.

Butterfly (Her Sis, the Other Great Aunt, taught 4-H but I only was allowed the year I turned 9--last year our school had it)

I keep Post-it notes by the computer, well, cause I'm getting old and can't remember anything for longer than 2 seconds. If I remember to do it, I'll stick one of those under the presser foot. I also have a blue thingy with a hole in the end. It slips up over the needle to hold it in place whilst you take an old one out or put a new one in.

I have visions of doing just this thing.

Cindy

Noooo, Cindy. Let's don't work too hard at this. Just picture me (a 90 pound weakling) holding up a SM and shaking the dickens out of it. That ought to be a vision to remember. If you have the throatplate off, there's lots of fun places for a needle to dive in and hide. A further warning: We have a new coffee pot. The safety warning clearly printed on it (in 3 languages) was to NOT hold it over people. I guess we can do that. Polly

I have the needle holder, too-do you think I'd remember it, let alone long enuf to remember to use it? Nope.

Butterfly (you're not as alone in forgetting as you think.but then you won't remember I wrote this either.

what did I say?)

It's no fun, that's for sure. But Apple tech support is *so* good -- it took "escalating" my case to a higher level geek, but they finally had me up and running again. Whew!

And I'll echo your "good for them" -- after three days of dealing with Embarq tech support, I'm almost ready to go phone-less. :(