I'm Quilting!

Since way back in mid-November, I have not taken a successful stitch on the long arm machine. I loaded what I called a freebie quilt which would be for our then-expected third granddaughter. It was made with leftover parts from a previous quilt, and it was just as cute as can be.

It's been so long ago, I'm having a hard time recalling the exact order of things, but I believe I'd quilted 3 or 4 quilts prior to this one and was on quite a roll. I had knee surgery in late October, and I know I had at least two ready for binding to do while in recovery and rehab. When I went back to work on this, I had nothing but broken threads - top threads - and for the life of me, I could not diagnose the problem. 

Threads broke in as few as 5-10 stitches. I was beside myself with frustration. Finally, we were approaching Christmas, and I needed to stop fretting about the long arm and get myself ready for the family feast! And as soon as that was over, we would head out for our 3-month winter in Florida. 

In July, I took the machine apart and drove it to Amish Country - Holmes County, here in Ohio - to a well-known and highly regarded repair shop, Chestnut Ridge. It was about a three-hour drive to get there, and about 3 weeks later, we went back to pick it up. (I will do a write-up on that great shop in a future post.) For now, I will just say that I still had trouble with thread breakage after putting the machine back on the frame. I was truly flummoxed. I called the technician who worked on my machine and sent him pictures that he requested to try to diagnose from those. Finally, I took the thread off, put a different spool on, re-threaded the machine and gave it a whirl. 

EUREKA! IT WORKED! 

And I believe I have diagnosed my issue. The pin on which the spool sits had vibrated forward and the guide bar above it had vibrated too low and close to the spool. Thread was getting jammed up in that area where the thread leaves the spool such that it pulled and eventually broke.

So this little quilt is quilted - not the prettiest quilting I've ever done - but it is done, and I can proceed with a gazillion more that I need to get done. How to decide which to do next?? 

Man, I am so glad to be able to say that I've (apparently) solved my thread-breaking issue. You can bet I'm gonna' get another quilt loaded ASAP.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne