Messy Stitches? Fix it Now! How to Adjust Your Tension on any Drop-In Bobbin Style Sewing Machine

Trying to sew on your sewing machine but your stitch just looks all messed up?  Maybe you have loops, maybe you have dots, maybe it's all wavy and weird-looking.

Chances are, your tension is messed up! So we're going to talk about tension today and how to balance that to get a nice stitch.  

We're going to be doing it on this Janome Decor Computer DC3050 machine, but what we talk about today is going to apply to any machine with a drop-in style bobbin.

So, stay tuned, hit the LIKE, and we're going to get right into adjusting your machine's tension.

See how you see all these dots on the front? And on the back it just looks kind of wavy and weird?

So when you see dots on the front of the fabric, that means the top thread is too tight and it's pulling the loose bobbin thread through to the front. So we need to either loosen the top tension, or we need to increase tension on the bobbin.  

This here on the front of the machine is the tension dial.  So they have an "A" where the "4" would be, to indicate that that's a normal tension, but I'm gonna drop this down to the "3", and we're gonna slide some fabric in.  So always make sure the presser foot is lowered onto the fabric before you begin to sew, and then go ahead and hit the pedal.  I think it looks a little better. The dots are less pronounced, but the stitch looks really uneven and weird. The back looks weird too.  

Let's see what happens if we bring the tension down to "2".  It does look better, but it just doesn't look very straight. It just looks messy and weird.  It looks better.

 We're probably going to have to change the bobbin tension, but let's just go ahead and see what happens  at "1".   

Tension is a balance between the top thread and the bobbin thread, so there's different ways that you can arrive at the right tension.  They just need to be in balance with each other.  

That made a weird noise.  They usually don't like to be turned that far down.  Okay so now we're getting some loops on the top which means now our top thread is too loose.  So that was to be expected, we have it all the way down to "1".

So let's see what we can do with adjusting the bobbin tension.  So I'm going to put the top tension back to its default which is the "4" that is marked with an "A", and let's see what we can do underneath.  

So first we need to remove this silver plate. This is your throat plate, also known as your needle plate.  So there's one screw that holds it in.  So you'll just need a little screwdriver to get that out.  

We can also take off the presser foot just to make it easier. So just hit this red button and your presser foot will fall off. Now we can just lift this throat plate off of here, we can take our bobbin out, and  this black piece here is what we are looking for, this is your bobbin case.

 So this has two screws on it.  This screw just holds it together and this screw can be adjusted for tension.  So we decided our bobbin tension needed to be tighter, so we are gonna make some minute adjustments here, so if you look at this screw like it's a clock, its at "1" and "7", we're just gonna do a really minute turn, I'm just gonna do a half rotation so its at "11" and "4".  

So we're just gonna try that small change and see how that affects the stitch.  So were gonna put our bobbin case in, so just slide it in here so it's situated like that.  It has to be in there correctly, it can be in there all cockeyed like that. Like it needs to be flat and then all the way around the rim it's setting in there, correctly, and it should have just a little bit of jiggle like that, and that's how you know it's right.

Okay so now we'll put this back on.  We don't really need to put the screw back in to test it, because we might need to go back in and change it some more.  

To put your presser foot back on,  you'll see it has a bar, and then this thing that holds the presser foot here has like a little divot right here. So you'll line up that bar with that divot, and then we'll slowly lower the presser foot down onto it, and make sure it lines up.

And it should click right on, but if it doesn't do it by itself, you can hit the button.  And now we'll slide our fabric in and test it .

Okay, so I went ahead and I sewed this line here, so let's see how it compares.  It actually looks perfect compared to all these ones, where the bobbin tension was too loose.  See you don't see those dots at all anymore?  It looks really good.  And the back side also looks really good.  So you can see what a dramatic change that made in the stitch, just from a very minute tension adjustment in the bobbin case.  

So now that we have our tension successfully balanced, we can put this screw back in.  

Okay well I hope that helped you get your machine running smoothly with a nice, perfect stitch.  If so please do hit the LIKE button, and consider Subscribing to the Channel! We do a new video every Monday and it's all about sewing deep dives.  

So we cover sewing machine troubleshooting, alterations techniques, all kinds of other sewing techniques and things.  So, please hit the SUBSCRIBE button, and I'll see you next week for another video.