As to your question about leather, the 6460 has a special stitch for sewing leather. Select Colormatic cam C and install in the cam hole at the back of the machine. To remove/add a cam turn the upper left hand dial on the front of the machine to the small dot. This disengages the cam. Gently remove the cam by pulling straight out from the back of the machine. Install cam C straight in, ever so slightly twisting it back and forth into the hole to find the sweet spot. You'll hear a click when it's all the way in.
To use Viking's leather stitch, turn the upper left dial to the color yellow. (Note: The slash line on the upper left dial is a stop. You can't turn past that point. Go in the other direction to get to the icon or color you want.) Turn the upper right and bottom right dial to yellow also. The upper left dial is what selects the particular stitch on the cam, the leather stitch in this case. The upper right dial selects stitch length, and the lower right dial selects stitch width. You can move the right dials within the color range. Experiment on a scrap of cloth to get the stitch size the way you want it. The leather stitch looks like a straight stitch with a block style edging to the right of the straight stitch. This is supposed to give a stronger stitch to the leather rather than a straight stitch by itself.
If you don't have the manual for your machine: Select which of the eight cams you want to use. All the cams are removed/installed by turning the upper left dial on machine front to the small dot. At the rear of the machine, pull/insert cam straight in or out and twist slightly as you push in or remove to find the sweet spot. Move the dial away from the small dot to lock the cam in.
Turn upper left dial to stitch type you want and match the other dials to that same color. Upper right controls stitch length, lower right controls width. Bobbin tension is controlled by the dial at front left of the machine, above the needle.
Cams A-C are the workhorse cams and the rest are embroidery stitches.Straight stitch, button and stitched zig-zag will work on any cam. These stitches do not rely on matching a color code. To use those three: To select straight stitch, on the upper left dial, choose the icon that looks like a buttonhole with a zig that trails off to the right. Select stitch length on upper right dial and turn the lower right dial to zero, going by number rather than color.
To select stitched zig zag, turn upper left dial to the broken zig zag icon (to the right of the straight stitch icon). Select stitch length and width.
To move the needle to the side for buttonhole stitching or other times when you want the needle off center, turn the upper left dial to the button icon. If stitching a button hole, set stitch length to zero and lower right dial to desired stitch width. Push in the small white button that's beneath the lower right dial in order to prevent the feed dogs from moving the fabric forward. Pushing that button in is also handy for putting cloth under the foot before sewing as it prevents snagging and is used for tacking.
Some good info at this page
http://www.using-sewing-machines.com/6460/6460.html and also here http://www.ehow.com/how_2038402_sew-leather-standard-sewing-machine.html
No special stitch required for sewing leather or canvas, just a regular straight stitch. However, these fabrics tend to need a heavier thread and most domestic machines don't handle this well, especially through the needle eye. So you may find that you have to use regular 50 weight polyester thread.
But you need a leather needle for leather, it has a spear tip to cut the leather. And also source a roller foot if you possibly can as leather doesn't feed well. For the canvas, use a large 110 or 120 sharp needle.
With leather, if you look at commercially made garments, the seam allowances are often glued down inside the garment. And you often need to "hammer" the allowance flat to achieve this finish. And you can't pin two layers so paper clips are a good substitute (don't sew over them though). And you'll need weights to hold your pattern down while cutting out.
These fabrics are heavy duty and in commerical environments the machines used a big tough industrial units so achieving a similar finish with a domestic sewing machine is often a big ask of your machine. If you look at the stitching machine used at the local shoe repair shop you will see what I mean, the machine has very heavy thread and beefy feed dogs to feed through the leather.
Hope this helps you, as I say, you shouldn't need the cam, just straight stitch, about 2.5 or 3 length.
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