After 8 weeks I decided earlier this month to trade "Ruby" in at my local dealer, and upgraded to the Janome 9400.
My dealer had graciously given me a loaner to use, that was one upgrade newer than Ruby, and I loved the changes they had made to some of my everyday complaints. When I went to test drive the newer 9400, they had actually solved even more issues.
I had purchased the 7700 when it was very brand new.... first 7 mm machine on the domestic market, and the largest throat of 11" at the time.
Lesson learned.... this many new features is often not the time to buy.... my biggest complaints included:
- A very clumsy zipper foot! the heel of it was 7 mm wide to accommodate the wide feed dogs... but that made it nearly impossible to stitch near the zipper teeth, or to make a nice piping.
- Finding an accurate 1/4" seam without pieces twisting at the end of the sewing sentence. ( I had to use the far right needle position for the 1/4 inch... but then it would veer off at the end of triangle pieces.)
- The mechanism to use the single hole feature was a little piece of metal that would cover the wider needle hole, but it was prone to catching lint and acting up.... plus stitching in the far right needle position meant I couldn't use it where it was really useful, to keep triangle points from being eaten up at the beginning of stitching.
- It had a very hard time climbing up over seam bulk. I had to use a seam bridge more times than I felt I should ever have to. (my old Viking, and my Juki never had this issue... in fact my Featherweights can climb up more seam bulk)
- I never knew where the tension was set with the Auto Tension... so when I needed to adjust for FMQ, it was a huge guessing game.
- The pieces that slipped down under the walking foot would catch on my safety pins when free motion quilting.
- The presser foot lever was wide and long... which would also catch up on quilt sandwiches as they moved through the machine.... this would sometimes raise the presser foot just enough to mess with the tension. I had learned to listen for the change of sound... but it was a pain.
I've had Sophie here at home now for about a month. And she and I are getting along famously! I named her after my great great grandmother on my mom's side. Sophia arrived in the USA from Rohrbach, Russia on a ship in 1884. She was only 8 years old!
So far, she and I have mended some knits, free motion quilted, done some ruler work for quilting, pieced 250 half square triangles (without any twisting), pieced bulky seams on my "On Ringo Lake", and we took a fun class on embellishing fabric with zig zag stitches and metalic and specialty threads.
Last Sunday, she had a small temper tantrum while I was trying to set her up for FMQ.... but we eventually came to an understanding and I finally gave her a different spool of thread which seemed to make the difference.
One of the features that I really love is the "HP Plate and 1/4 foot combation". This throat plate automatically moves the needle over to the left side, using just the left half of the feed dog, for a narrow seam that does not grab or twist. ( Like a featherweight or Juki straight stitch). The foot is more of an industrial style, and this foot climbs over seams like a dream.
Of Course, she comes with ton of decorative stitches I will most likely never use to full capacity... She also has an auto foot up feature that is great if you are feeding lots of small block parts through in a chain.... and even with the 9 mm feed dogs, her zipper foot is now slim and trim. Zippers and piping are no problem at all.
