I have a Frister and Rossman 904, bought out of my overtime pay in 1978 or 1979. I used to sew a lot of my own clothes, but it hasn't been used a great deal in the last fifteen years (it has been serviced occasionally tho'). Retirement has given me the time to do More Sewing and somewhere in the loft is my Sewing Stash (including 4 metres of a lovely wool crepe Jean Muir roll end). The FR has never been particularly keen on sewing finer fabric e.g. Lawn (of which there is some in the stash too). It has a selection of stretch stitches and will do a basic overlock stitch. It doesn't do embroidery and its buttonholes aren't much tidier than the ones I can do by hand.

I don't feel the need for any more stiches tho'. Now, the bobbin thread isn't being picked up when I sew anything other than a straight stitch. I will be sewing a variety of fabric from wool worsted, to canvas to lawn. When the FR went on the blink and I was making some track suit style pants for a long flight, I borrowed my neighbour's Singer - no idea what model; it was computerised and did things fancy and I wasn't keen on it for various reasons. So, for the panel please. What would you do: a) try and get the FRrepaired or b) buy a new Bernina 330; or c) go for an older Bernina 1080 I've found on ebay that looks in good nick, but like me (ho ho, I wish), may be older than it looks?

Has your FR ever made good buttonholes? That would be a deciding factor for me -- if it has never made good buttonholes, I'd keep it for a second machine for whatever it does like, or I'd use it for a trade-in, but I wouldn't put money into it. I've never seen a bad machine make good buttonholes. I, personally, am not sold on Bernina.

Yes, they make good machines, but the prices they want for accessory feet are -- well -- they seem to think they're military contractors by the prices charged. And I've never sewn on a Bernina (other than the old straight stitchers) that were intuitively obvious to me, unlike many other brands. But a Bernina might suit you perfectly. I'd be visiting local dealers and repair shops with scraps of whatever fabrics you want to sew, and doing some major tryouts of new and used machines. My personal choices right now for value for money for new machines are Juki and Janome, for whatever that's worth. Maybe you don't even 'need' to get it repaired. If you just jammed your needle bar up a tiny bit, on it's screw there, so it won't sew, if you put the needle all the way in and then just lower the needle by a tad, (same thing or result as when lowering a needle bar instead) maybe it will suddenly just still pick up the bottom thread and sew fine that way.

That is what I would try first. Anime Super Yoyo Sub Indo more. Also maybe if you knocked the point off your hook, you could just get another one. Just since those lift out of there, every time you want to clean them off, with the flip locks there even.