Rethreading and Maintenance - 15 July 2025

For this project I needed to narrow the sides of a top. I measured and tried to draw a dashed line with pen as you can see in the photo above - it was hard to draw on this very soft fabric. I also used a safety pin to hold together the end because that section was very thick and I didn’t want it to move.

I sewed it as usual; the overlocker knife normally cuts and sews. This time, however, it only cut; it didn’t sew at all ! I was very confused and started wondering what had gone wrong.

I opened the machine and took the photo below : that was literally the inside of the overlocker. It looked so messy : full of dust and the thread looked loose and messed up. Machine maintenance is not something I often do but this sight certainly brought the need for it into focus.

You can see a close-up below :

I decided to check You tube to see whether there was a tutorial on how to ‘rethread’ a Janome Overlocker, model 9200D. I found this 5 year-old video and watched it all more than a couple of times to take it all in and to make sure I could do this:

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The video is very clear and informal in style. There’s not really that much background music but there’s quite a bit of background noise which I didn’t mind that much because I just wanted to re-thread the machine. It took me a while to be able to thread it all back again but I managed it okay in the end. It was not easy but I also managed to clean the inside of the machine quite a bit with an old brush. I’ll have to keep an eye on the level of debris inside that machine.

I was delighted when I saw it was all working again and managed to complete this project well.

Many thanks for reading !