Possessed?

Is my machine possessed? You be the judge.

Last wednesday, I decided to get serious about my business and practice my heart out. I loaded some Christmasy fabric, some batting, and some muslin that I used my JoAnns coupon on. I threaded my machine, put in a new pre-wound bobbin, and was off to the races.

For three hours solid, I quilted like it was meant to be. No thread breakage, no tension issues, and my stitches looked fabulous! Then, I broke a needle. Not fun, but not the end of the world. I put a fresh needle in, rethreaded, checked everything to make sure all was still fine and started quilting away.

Then another needle broke after about 15 minutes. Now it was still not the end of the world, but it was a bit more serious. I put in a fresh needle, rethreaded, and checked to make sure the needle was not hitting something that it shouldn't. After re-checking everything, I went back to quilting.

The railroad tracks on the back of my quilt were so bad that I was glad I didn't live somewhere close to trains traveling through the countryside! Knowing that RR tracks area result of tension issues, I started playing around with the tensions. After two hours of trying, and nothing working, I quit.

On Thursday morning, I checked out all the helpful web sites and wrote down everything they suggested for RR tracks and set out to work. Probelm was, the RR Tracks were now gone! Don't know where they went, but they were definitely gone! In their place I had skipped stitches. Back to the web sites to find answers to that problem...

On Friday morning, I re-timed my machine. The skipped stitches were still as bad as the day before. At least 95% of the stitches were skipped. Not good if you plan on actually making a quilt that stays together! I called my machine manufacturer and talked to a nice service tech. We did a multitude of things, some helped, some didn't. By the time I decided to quit, I now had the skipped stitches down to only 5% skipped. Much better, but still not good enough to actually do a quilt.

Since I had to frog all those stitches out, I decided to wait until Rex came home to see if he could help me re-time my machine. (maybe I was missing something.) After his expert help, there was still no chnage on the stitch quality, so I let her rest over the weekend... didn't want to have to replace a window because I had thrown her out!

Monday morning, the skipped stitches are gone! Guess they went on vacation along with the tension problems and RR tracks! So, I am sewing along. Great tension, my stitches look great, but I am still having a bit of a problem with thread breakage. Thread breakage is due either to tension being too tight or a burr somewher on the htread path.

I knew the tension was good, so I started looking for burrs on all the metal parts. I found that my round foot had a gouge in it and the inside hole was so sharp it cut my finger. Could that be my culprit? After smoothing out the gouge, and making the inside hole as smooth as I could, I took an old pair of panty hose to my machine. The only otehr shart spot I found along the thread path was on the guard over my take up hook (I guess that is what it is called). So, of course I removed that piece.

I'm sewing along when I see a piece of black thread on my quilt top. Strange, I'm not using black thread, where did that come from? So, I remove it...only it isn't thread. It is some sort of a wire... stranger still. After a few more minutes of quilting, my thread breaks. As I am re-threading, I notice something odd. My check spring is missing! That is what that black 'thread' was. My check spring broke. So, why is my machine still stitching good? Doesn't she know that she should have all kikds of problems without a checkspring???

OK, I've ordered a new check spring, and now I am afraid of what is going to happen next. No one at the factory can understand why she is still stitching fine, or what the previous problems were all about. Tension problems are caused by a reason.... they don't just come and go at will.

Can't wait for the next installment on that issue...

Nini