Can't Machine Quilt...Why Does Machine Skip?

[ozark hen]

Well they are beautiful. I have a 7 yr old great grandson who has art work posted on line by the class teacher. Their artwork is put on different items & sold. I am collecting his on quilt blocks to put together for him. I will not be the one quilting nor assembling quilt though lol

 

[speckledhen]

Well they are beautiful. I have a 7 yr old great grandson who has art work posted on line by the class teacher. Their artwork is put on different items & sold. I am collecting his on quilt blocks to put together for him. I will not be the one quilting nor assembling quilt though lol

What a nice idea! He'll treasure that, I'm sure!

 

[ozark hen]

I'm hoping so. He doesn't know about it as I want it to be a surprise

 

[wyoDreamer]

One of my co-workers collected T-shirts from her son's swim meets in high school. For graduation, she had them sewn into a quilt for him to take to college. It turned out really neat and he loved it.

 

[speckledhen]

I finished the free motion quilting on this 40" x 56" baby quilt, made and attached the binding to the front, hopefully to stitch on back today and be done. It's not perfect and the small harp space on the machine did make things very difficult in spots, especially as the quilt stiffened with the quilted areas. I'm pleased that there are very few little tucks in the fabric on back, way less than I expected. I am sure now that I can do this and improve on it.

 

[speckledhen]

Decided to take the plunge and start my Masters of Mountain View series bed runner. Using black Gutermann thread.

 

[SuperK]

Well, I saw this thread and had to check it out. I don't quilt but I do sew every day as part of my 'retirement' business. In reading the 15 pages of posts, I didn't really where see the the original question was answered. I did see that there are some beautiful quilts being made and some making real progress in the posters free-handing skills.Nice work.

If you only have one machine I assume the last posts of your practice work means the issue has cleared up but in case it hasn't,

My suggestions were going to be, in order of likelihood:
1. needle bent, even a little- they are too cheap to not change them,
2. wrong needle- the loop may not be forming or have the correct dwell for the loop to form so the shuttle can pick it up,
3. wrong thread (like most of the other posters)
4. re-thread bobbin- some machines get finicky when the thread spools into the bobbin tensioner the wrong direction,
5. Shuttle timing may be off- when the needle hits the shuttle /hook/case, even a small strike, it can cause timing issues.
6. Feed dogs may not be fully disengaged.

I've been sewing since I was 10, made a lot of my own clothes in JH and into HS, made lots of clothes for my 3 daughters including one's wedding and her maid of honor's dress. I have and sew on a vintage Juki DDL-555, Singer, and Bernina, we have two sergers and we are picking up an additional Juki with walking foot this week. Looking forward to that one- I learned back when the price of material was less expensive than the clothes made from them, before the last of the USA megamills closed on the east coast and we started importing our textiles. It is heartening to see that the mills are actually making a come back.

 

[speckledhen]

@SuperK thanks for your input. Yes, I did sort of figure out that my issue was mainly the tension and stitch length settings, in addition to the thread-it hates Coats & Clark for free motion, though it is fine with it when just piecing. My machine is computerized so I can't completely set stitch length myself, sets it for me depending on which stitch I use. Nothing sets it to zero. But, I did form an uneasy truce with my machine.

I've found my Brother likes Gutermann and Signature cotton threads just fine.They are pretty thin whereas the Coats & Clark machine quilting threads are thicker, not sure if that's the issue or just that the others are better made. I am still having issues, mostly with the tiny harp space, but only a different machine will ease that up for me. The feed dogs are either up or down, no in-between settings, and they work okay.

 

[SuperK]

Very nice, its good when the problems are solved and we can get back to business. Though I've been sewing for years my machine's always think I need to learn more so they occasionally throw new problems my way just to see if I'm paying attention. My Singer is an embroidery machine and when I set it for this the feed dogs are supposed to disengage, but once in a blue moon, the levers of the "Automatic" disengage function just won't go fully down. Only happens when I am needing a project done yesterday- LOL

BTW, my favorite pic posted was the rooster quilt where you took the panel image out of the chicken material- brilliant.

 

[speckledhen]

Very nice, its good when the problems are solved and we can get back to business. Though I've been sewing for years my machine's always think I need to learn more so they occasionally throw new problems my way just to see if I'm paying attention. My Singer is an embroidery machine and when I set it for this the feed dogs are supposed to disengage, but once in a blue moon, the levers of the "Automatic" disengage function just won't go fully down. Only happens when I am needing a project done yesterday- LOL

BTW, my favorite pic posted was the rooster quilt where you took the panel image out of the chicken material- brilliant.

Thank you! Welcome to BYC, too, I forgot to say. Sounds like you are a very experienced seamstress. Me, I'm just a 30 year fumbler. I can't sew, only quilt (to me, that's more art than sewing) so when I'm trying to troubleshoot issues, I'm at a distinct disadvantage, being familiar only with the machine I have now, not with machines in general.