Solving Skipped Stitches (and a bit o’ stitch reference for Janome JW8100)

This has been my first encounter with skipped stitches since I started sewing 4 months ago. Maybe I’ve just been lucky, or my first machine was a lot more forgiving with settings and what-not. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing that it pretty much sewed even if I was doing something wrong. My new machine (Janome JW8100) is turning out to be a lot less forgiving in that area, which is probably good because it’s forcing me to double-check things and set things the way they need to be set. Like a real bona fide sewist.

I’ve been waiting to sew together my Bibi skirt for what feels like eons now, and was excited that I would finally be able to do so when my new machine came. When I sat down to do it, switched to my Schmetz Jersey Ballpoint needle, set my stitch settings to what Tilly writes in her Stretch! book, and sewed a test seam on some ponte fabric scraps… Enter the dreaded skipped stitches. (See the crappy ones above and to the right of the “E” in JANOME in my photo? That’s them.)

Sigh.

I immediately went to my manual and it listed the following helpful hints:

1. The needle is incorrectly inserted, bent or blunt. Nope. I put it in correctly, and it’s not bent or blunt; it’s brand new.
2. The needle and/or threads are not suitable for the work being sewn. My thread is an all-purpose Coats & Clark polyester thread. It’s pretty standard. So no on that one. The needle… Well, it’s not a Janome specific needle. But Schmetz is pretty standard too, innit?
3. A blue tip needle is not being used for sewing stretch, very fine fabrics
   and synthetics. Okay…it’s not a blue tip needle even though it IS ball point, and yes it’s stretchy fabric (although definitely not fine). This must be the culprit.
4. The needle thread is not threaded properly. Not it; everything is threaded fine. I can run the same stitch on woven fabric with no issue.
5. A poor quality needle is used. Again…I don’t think Schmetz is poor quality.

So off I went to order blue tip Janome needles. And red tip. And purple tip. Because I’d rather have them all in case just one doesn’t solve the problem.

Commence waiting for the arrival of the blue/red/purple tip needles. Might as well learn a bit more about different types of knit stitches, specifically THIS one…

(BTW, I really wish sewing machine companies created a master reference of their stitch icons, what they’re called, and what they’re typically used for. I started to piece together my own reference, which is incomplete at the moment, but I’ll put it here in case someone else benefits from it. Or if anyone can help fill in the blanks, that’d be fantastic!)

Anyhoo, while digging through unofficial references and forums and whatnot, I read that skipped stitches can also happen if your thread tension is too high.

Hm.

Back to my machine I go. I move my top thread tension wheel down to 2 (it was previously set at 5), and test the stitches. See the pink zig-zags in the top left of my photo? That’s them.

Problem supposedly solved. Until I did round 2 of testing. Which gets even more confounding.

So I used the same stitch settings for each of these tests and the same Gutermann all-purpose polyester thread and kept my top tension set at 2. There’s the no-skipped version at the top of this photo. That was using the Schmetz Jersey needle with a walking foot. (Really not liking the walking foot that came with my Janome, though. It may feed the top and bottom layers evenly, but it pulls everything viciously off to the side – hence the crooked left end. I popped my Singer walking foot on and it doesn’t do that.)

On the 3 atrocious tests on the bottom, I used a standard zig-zag foot. On the bottom-most test, I slowed the speed of my machine.

I really don’t get this.

I’m starting to conclude that the Schmetz Jersey needle is just not good for this application. Not sure where it does fit into the world of sewing needles, but seems to not be for ponte knit fabric. I’ll either be able to confirm that tomorrow when I get my other needles, or just spiral further into this swirl of confusion.

Enter the Janome Blue Tip Needle

There it is. The top one is pretty obviously the Janome blue tip needle, as evidenced by it’s blue shank. The bottom one is the Schmetz jersey ballpoint needle. Definite differences. The blue tip is shorter, narrower, the eye is smaller, the shank (the part that goes into the machine) is shorter, and all that leads us to:

See all those dark blue zigzag stitches on the bottom scraps? Those were sewn with the same settings (minus the walking foot) I used for the hot messes above. The only difference was the blue tip needle. I even varied my speed from super slow to extra fast.

I am relieved it seems to be solved now.
Annoyed that the machine is so picky about needles (although I guess it should be if it’s doing things right.)
And paranoid that it’s going to start skipping again.

I guess the lesson here is

NEEDLES MATTER.