Yesterday, I was trying to practice some free motion work, but I have a problem that I haven't seen addressed on here. It will be doing fine, but then it starts skipping stitches and a few stitches or a couple of inches later, it will start stitching again. Any advise, or it it my machine? HELP!

I think your speed might be the problem. The speed you are moving the fabric, I mean.

It will do it when I haven't changed the speed of the machine or how fast I am moving the fabric. It just won't make the stitches and then starts up again.

For some reason it is not picking up the bobbin thread. It could be something simple as a itty bitty piece of lint. Try cleaning out your bobbin case really good, re-thread your machine, try a new needle (even if you started with a brand new needle).

I'll try that. Thanks

Is the fabric on the quilt batik? If so this might be the culprit. With batiks I always use a larger needle.

I'd say to try a larger needle. What size are you currently using?

I would also suggest cleaning your machine. It always amazes me how much lint gets into my machine from free motion quilting. :roll: I am pretty diligent in cleaning my machine, but nothing beats taking it in and getting it done professionally from time to time. If it's been a couple years, you may want to have your machine serviced, just to be sure there isn't an underlying problem developing.

I've only just begun to learn to machine quilt myself so I don't have the experience to give any other advice. I'll be watching this thread with interest to see what the experts in machine quilting suggest.

I may know what it is. I went to a FMQ class in Oct. My friend was having that problem. Her machine was not built for FMQ and when I would pull the fabric forward it was fine but when you would push it away from you it would skip stitches right and left. The book said you can with that machine but it does not work at all. Try an experiment. See if it is the direction.

I was having this problem too. I cleaned the lint, changed the needle and also re-threaded top and bottom threads. I also noticed that you have to have your quilt balanced just right. When mine isn't it will pull and I get skipped stitches!

You might try to tighten up your tension also. Just a wee bit.
I was trying to sew 2 pieces of flannel together the other day and mine would do the same thing. I did 2 things. Tighten up the tension a tad, and changed my top thread to a larger spool. Not sure which one was really the one that did it, but after I did both things, it worked just fine for me.
Good luck
Bev