Friday, November 26, 2010

troubleshooting...

Hello NYC Metro Mod Quilters-
I am enjoying spending my holiday today with my newly tuned-up machine, fixing the timing really improved my free-motion quilting. But I'm still having lots of trouble with my thread breaking... like this:Can you see what happened there? While free-motion quilting in little swooping curves (it's worse when trying angles) the thread breaks partially and gets wound up in itself and then eventually breaks entirely.

Has anyone else had this problem?? It's a new needle, a newly tuned machine... I'm hoping it's just poor quality thread or something? I'm using Coats Cotton for machine quilting... any ideas would be appreciated, sometimes this happens every few inches. Not so much fun.

Happy post-Thanksgiving all! I'm looking forward to the upcoming meeting...
Thanks,
-Christa

3 comments:

  1. I'm absolutely NO expert on machine free motion quilting... mostly because of the problems you're having... but have some possible ideas as to cause... as you suggested, thread may be poor, or the tension on bobbin/needle could be too tight... I'm sure you've already double checked your threading of the machine......
    Good luck and don't give up (like I have)

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  2. Most likely thread... Try a cotton poly blend...

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  3. What type of needle are you using. If the eye is too small, it shreds the thread when you are free-motion quilting. I use a topstitch needle - it has a much larger eye in the same size needle. You should always use good quality thread. You might also try lowering your top tension by 1 or 2 numbers. When you find the combination that works best, write down all the information to use as a starting point for your next project.

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