Brother LS-2125 Mechanical Sewing Machine

I bought this for myself in an attempt to make my own curtains. I have never really messed with a sewing machine before, but I figured out that I would save money on them even with buying the sewing machine. It was easy to understand the manual. I had a picture guide on how to do most things like how to thread the bobbin and threading the needle. It is easy to use, but some of the problems that I had were that I could not get the spool of thread to stay where it was supposed to it kept falling off so I rigged it with some twist ties so that it will stay on. Another problem that I have is that the stitching is pretty short even on the setting for the stitches to be long. I was trying to sew a seam on a blackout liner and at first the stitches were so close together that it just ripped up where the seam was. The last annoying thing is that when you push the petal you have to push it a lot to get it to start and since I haven't used sewing machines very much it goes too fast when I am starting to stitch. I do like it, but I wish there was a way to make the stitches longer.