Friday, February 3, 2017

Strange Stitching

Don't tell anyone, but I'm going to cheat on the UFO game again this month. The number Judy has drawn out of the hat is 9, but I'm going to keep working on my 1 instead. Funnily enough, my 9 was originally En Provence, which I swapped for last month's number.

I've stitched-in-the-ditch around the blocks, and now I've started stitching around the appliqué. But today I had a couple of problems with the stitching:


These pictures are of the back of the quilt. The snarls of thread are the upper thread. The first photo shows one I didn't really notice when it happened, except there was a bit of an unusual sound to the machine. The second photo I was more aware there was a problem. As well as the sound, the upper thread appeared to be split or kinking up somehow. The direction I was sewing in was from right to left here, so the snarl at the top right happened first, then the one further down. After the second one, the machine seemed to start sewing correctly again.

I did a bit more trouble-free sewing later in the day, and the only change I made was to slow the machine down. I had been sewing with it set at 30%, which is what I normally use for free-motion work, but you might notice in my samples that the stitches are pretty short. Today for whatever reason I wasn't moving the piece fast enough for that speed. I slowed the machine to 25%, and managed to do quite a bit more quilting without having more of these tangles. So I don't know if there might have been a bad section in the thread which I am now past, or if the speed made a difference.

2 comments:

jacaranda said...

I wouldn't call it cheating, getting priorities in order is what it is called. I am having snarls when I use the automatic thread cutter.

Jeanette said...

Maybe doing an extra clean in the bobbin area and changing the needle would help. You should be able to repair the snarled area so you don't have to unpick the lot.