Two college degrees and still I can't operate a sewing machine

Okay, so in the quest for a new hobby, I decide I'll try sewing. I can make blankets and stuff, and maybe even sell them! (HAHAHA!)

Yesterday I went to Hobby Lobby and bought fabric. What an escapade that is. Note to self: Next time you need fabric, try Jo-Ann's or Hancock. But I got a few things to do some starter projects with and some thread.

I talked my mom into letting me confiscate her old sewing machine. After all, she has a brand-new, fancy-shmancy machine that cost a lot of money (exactly how much she won't say), and she needs to use it. She warns me that the fabric doesn't move like it's supposed to, but I figure, pshaw, I can pull fabric through a sewing machine without a problem.

Before I can even try to move the fabric, I need to move the piece that my mom always keeps under the presser foot and I can't seem to manage that. I finally figure that out, and put my own fabric in the machine.

Put my foot on the pedal and off we go.

Or not.

There are holes in my fabric, but no thread. WTF? While the needle was threaded when Mom gave me the machine, my fighting with the fabric to get it out from under the presser foot must have unthreaded the needle. So, I attempt to thread the needle, which I managed to figure out without too much trouble.

Whew, crisis number one averted. Put the fabric back under it and off we go. But I've got killer loops on the bottom. WTF did I do now?

I try to adjust the tension on the machine, but that doesn't do a damn thing. I call Mom and tell her that I hate her machine. She laughed and said the bobbin on it has always been difficult as hell. So I go back upstairs and attack the bobbin with reckless abandon. It took me reading the instructions three or four different times before they made sense, and I get the bobbin to thread correctly. (For the record, as a technical writer for six years, I can tell you that a) these instructions sucked and b) short of the documentation I've written, I've never spent this much time with documentation in front of me.)

I do a Google search about threading machines and bobbins. As it turns out, I threaded the needle wrong, I completely missed the tensioner. Ha, maybe that's why the tension doesn't change.

I'm thrilled. Now I have the bobbin and needle threaded correctly, maybe now I can actually sew a straight line without a "birdsnest" on the bottom. I put my fabric under the needle, my foot on the pedal and off I go... straight into another birdsnest. ARGH.

I call Mom and tell her how much I hate her machine. Again. She laughs at my stories and then proceeds to tell me it sounds like a tension problem. I said, "I know, but no matter what I change the tension to, it still does it." She tells me that in order to change the tension I have to do more than just move the dial - and once again (for like the tenth time) she tells me to read the book. I have been reading the book - but I guess I assumed changing the tension would be easy. Guess not.

I haven't made it back upstairs to adjust the tension. I don't really want to. I want to take this stupid machine out into a field with a baseball bat and "Damn, It Feels Good to be a Gangsta" playing in the background.