Hello everyone,
I'm a young expectant mother trying my hand at my first quilt for our son. It grew from a joke of my husband (as I was sewing nursery decor/tapestry) to a very real project that I'm dying to complete before the birth (a week or two away). This is what I have so far (it's a Star Wars theme with hand-made appliqués, from scraps of fabric leftover from the nursery).
The quilt top is finished. It's not perfect, it's certainly unorthodox and uneven (I did not have a rotary cutter, did not follow a pattern, etc.) and... well I'm sure I could win a few "ugly quilts" contests - but it was a labor of love and I'd like to quilt it now!
I purchased a darning foot and installed it successfully on my machine. These are the steps I've taken so far.
- The darning foot is the correct type for my low-shank machine, it goes up and down with the needle and I can move the quilt sandwich underneath it.
- I have dropped the feed dogs.
- I have adjusted stitch length to 0, lowered the tension and reduced stitch length to 0.
And then I tried quilting (thankfully on a piece of scrap batting). I've been struggling for well over an hour. After only 2 or 3 stitches, even by just turning the wheel, my machine locks up and I find a bunched up knot in the bobbin case. I looked everywhere I could online, called the lady who sold me the darning foot, banged my head on the desk, rethreaded the machine, redid the bobbin...
I'm at a loss. My machine is a cheap Singer Heavy Duty 4411 and from what I can see, even though I've lowered the feed dogs, the bobbin thread gets caught in the lowered teeth and starts going haywire immediately. Is that even possible?
In the worst case scenario where I don't manage to free-motion quilt it, how horrible would cross diagonal quilting look, considering the "pattern"?
Any advice would be helpful. Thank you so much,
F.