After doing a lot of skinning and clothing repair I have never got the bar more than halfway between the neutral point and the needle and thread symbol. At some point along the way, it will reset back to neutral. There is no set thing that I can see that does this. I have had it reset when starting the game and whilst playing the game and no definitive point along the skill line. This bug makes soft skill redundant and of no value in the game. It's bad enough that in reality when playing the game all people will be at the needle and thread side as that is what you are doing most whilst playing. Camp building happens once generally and that is it.