I was making some simple drawstring pouches to hold earrings in. Each one would take less than 10 minutes to sew if my sewing machine was working, but after the first, I spent over an hour trying to figure out why the thread was bunching up on the bottom instead of sewing cleanly. I checked every setting, took it apart as much as I was comfortable, and read the manual cover to cover without finding an answer.

Finally, I gave up and called my grandma to see if I could come over and use her sewing machine to finish the batch of bags I was working on. She ended up helping me troubleshoot the machine over the phone. Even though I was getting tired and cranky, I tried everything she told me to, even rechecking the things I had spent the previous hour on. After all, she's been sewing for at least twice as long as I've been alive, I'd be stupid to not listen to her advice.

And what do you know, it turns out I had completely missed checking the thread tension on the bottom, and I was only fiddling with the top thread. It was way too loose, and that was causing most of my problems.

Unfortunately, it was still bunching up in a few places even after I corrected the tension, and since sewing machines only have so many parts, it wasn't long before we exhausted the list of possibilities. My grannie's final suggestion? "Have you tried turning it off, completely removing the spool and bobbin and rethreading it, then trying it again?"

Reboot my sewing machine? There's no way that could work. Still, I said, "why not?", rethreaded it, and... Now it works perfectly.

It made me realize what people like her feel like when we help them with their computers! They're up against a machine they don't fully understand or feel comfortable using, and they don't want to go outside of their comfort zone and poke around in case they break something, but they know something's not working. Bless my grandma for being so patient with me while I was being the silly person who didn't know how to do something incredibly basic. One person's inability to copy and paste is another's inability to check both the top and bottom thread tension.

I love you, grandma! If you had a computer I would always help you fix it!

TL;DR: Roles were reversed when my grandma helped me troubleshoot my sewing machine by phone. I actually listened to her advice, unlike many users from this subreddit's tales. Not only does my sewing machine work again, but I also gained new insight into the minds of non-experts on technology.