Eyelashes: Undesireable in Quilting

One thing I learned early on with this long arm machine is that we have new vocabulary words. "Eyelashes" would be one of the first I learned, and these are definitely to be avoided at all costs.

Eyelashes. Perfect name for this absolute mess of things, isn't it? I usually check the quilting on the underside with each roll of the quilt, and stop when I see problems. This time, I guess I thought I had things under control and never once checked - until I was nearly finished with quilting. Then I saw this. Further investigation revealed that my eyelash problem had been happening for several passes of the machine.

So how does one fix this? I basically have two problems: a quilt problem and a machine problem.

Okay.

Dealing with the quilt first, I removed the quilt from the frame and then with my trust seam ripper, removed the offending stitches. I spent an evening "unquilting"  - an incredibly easy task with such loose stitches. 

What a mess. What a waste of thread. What a waste of time.

This quilt is one that I've not shared here - yet. It will be given to one of the Frienzies. The fabric is batik - both the quilt top and the backing. I have never quilted on batik before, so I don't know if that could have contributed to the problem with the tension or not. I suspect that it may have been partially responsible, but I am more inclined to think that I quilted over some thick intersections on the quilt top. I should have been more mindful of avoiding those places where many fabrics came together in one point. 

Next up, the machine. I took an orphan block, made a quilt sandwich and loaded it onto the frame. Through incremental adjustments, I have corrected the tension. I will share this orphan block with you in a future post. I think you might find it interesting to see the stitches slowly become corrected as I processed through tightening the tension. 

I have yet to reload the quilt onto the frame. I am procrastinating. Sooner or later, I will make myself do it. Stay tuned to find out if I have a happy ending or not. 

Happy Quilting, Friends!