Avoid Skipped Stitches and Troubleshoot your Coverstitch Machine

August 13, 2017

Skipped stitches, wonky tension and unravelling seams are common occurrences for many coverstitch users. Sometimes it’s the machine, but often it’s the setup that is faulty. In this video coverstitch tutorial I share my top 10 troubleshooting tips for coverstitching – i.e. things I learned the hard way. Many coverstitching machines are moody buggers that needs very precise handling, at least on more challenging fabrics, and I think this is where it gets hairy for a lot of people, including me. That said, many problems can be avoided if you just set up the machine right and take no shortcuts, and in this video I explain how to do that. But of course, as I also say in the video, some coverstitch machines will perform better than others, and that’s just a fact.

My own experience with coverstitching

As for my own machine, Janome Coverpro 2000CPX, it’s appears to be one of those love/hate machines. Some people find it super fiddly and have problems with skipped stitches, while others have smooth sailing on most fabrics. As for me, I find that I have to work a fair bit with the settings in order to get good result on difficult fabrics and thick seams. But on regular cotton knits and other “easy” knit fabrics, it works very well without any meddling on my behalf and compared to my old Pfaff Cover/Serger combo machine, the Janome is way more reliable.

But as soon as I start to take shortcuts with the setup, I encounter problems and that is why I feel very passionate about spreading the word about this and what needs to be done in order to get the machine to work properly. I think a lot of people get their hopes dashed when they start using the coverstitch machine and realise that it doesn’t always work wonderfully straight out of the box. So this is what I want to help my fellow sewists with. Hopefully you’ll find this coverstitch tutorial useful.