Mike, your suggestion of cleaning the tension dials worked perfectly. I was able to remove the entire assembly, clean the disks properly, reassemble (with the aid of lots of pictures), and now (thankfully) thread is no longer getting caught. However...my machine is still not ready to tackle my next project.
The thread is no longer getting caught between the tension disks like I said, but it seems to get caught every now and again in the bobbin case. I didn't notice this before...maybe because the tension disks were more problematic. I loosened the tension screw on the case (just a tad...maybe 1/4 turn), and it seemed to help a bit, but I'm still getting caught every now and again. Even when I thread through the case, I sometimes have a hard time pulling the thread out. I'm afraid to mess with the screw too much, so thought I'd ask before I really mess something up. In addition, when I sew, it's obvious the tension is off somewhere, though I can't tell where the problem lies (this was happening before I turned the screw on the bobbin case, which is why I figured I had nothing to lose).
Here are some pictures of how the machine is sewing as of now. If I need to change the thread color for easier viewing, please let me know. Can you, or anyone else see what the issue is and able to lend more assistance? Thanks again!
Underside of fabric.
The green thread is the top, the black, bottom. I could tell the tension was too loose with the middle straight line, so I tightened it back to where it was with the zig zag (4). The reason I was thinking the tension was too tight is that with different fabric I was using last night (flannel), it would pucker really bad when sewing a line. Perhaps this is more of a needle issue than a tension one? I don't know...arrg!
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Top of fabric
Again, green is top thread, black is bottom. It seems to me that the tension with the zig zag is too tight, but when I loosened a notch, I got the first straight line (middle on fabric) which was obviously too loose.
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