Maybe too much electronics....
OK, so I've had my machine for about a year. I purchased it for a steal, and primarily for the step up in motor and capability. But at the time I thought it had 100 more stitches than I would want. And I confirmed that. A few weeks back I was trying to embellish some plane fabric for a simple attention getter. So I started experimenting with the fancy stitches. The leaf, the flower, some lettering. It was OK. I would expect that someone might see these as a feature capable of creating labels or minor details. The quality is not so good. The flower petals aren't round, the stitch lengths are too long to achieve a neat design. Lucky me, I don't do this often. I'm much more of a straight stitch kind of girl.
Also, the instrument makes an interesting "BONG" noise when I lower the needle, which it doesn't make if I just press on the pedal. The feed dog settings aren't really as sensitive as the number of positions (6). I really only noticed about 3 real positions. This is a common trick on blenders. What does work really well, the feed dogs can be lowered completely out of the way. With a $20 generic open loop foot, I've experimented with some free-motion quilting. Which the machine handled quite well, much better than I did.
I've also taken apart the feed dog cover and have done a manual cleaning, which was easy to do and easy to put back together. SO MUCH LINT! Wow! it was really amazing how much had built up in relatively few hours of quilting. I suggest you open it up and run the vacuum over it after every quilt sized project!
The Auto-threader.... some needles get loaded in or are just a little off center. So sometimes, I've had to push the needle to one side to get the threader through the hole. No big deal. The bigger deal, the little light is not quite enough. But $10 at Ikea got me a tiny and very flexible little lamp for better lighting. I also found the nook to the right of the needle a little small for quilting. I had to pretty tightly roll up the last quilt to get it to fit for the quilting portion. But, with the walking foot, it went so easily! Nice and straight and even. And I didn't have any tension issues the whole time!
My sister has an Emerald in the 100 series, which she likes very much. I believe she has a manual stitch selection knob and little or no electronics. Yet, she makes custom purses from upholstery fabric on hers.
Love my Viking!
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