Originally Posted by
Grambi
I had this trouble with my QE 4.0 on the last quilt I did. I think I broke at least six needles just FMQ the border. I'm pretty sure that it was my fault. I was using the single hole plate and was pulling a bit too much on my quilt causing the needle to hit the plate. I switched out plates and the problems improved but didn't go away completely. I still think that it was my pulling too hard but I went ahead and took it to my dealer for an annual cleaning and to have him check the issue out. Haven't picked it up yet, so don't have any suggestion other than to slow down your movement or speed up the needle speed a bit.
Just wanted to update: I picked my machine up this afternoon and the dealer didn't find anything wrong except that it was "really, really dirty". So will see how it does now when I get a chance to sew. I am pretty obsessive about cleaning out my bobbin area (taking out the bobbin case and cleaning everything reachable) every one or two bobbins. I find it so frustrating that we aren't able to clean further on our own. With the small amount of sewing and quilting that I've done in the past year, I would never have guessed that it was that bad. My husband tells me that we have some of those tiny vacuum attachments around the house somewhere. I'm going to start using those to try to clean better and hope that helps.