Kwiltr

Hello and thank you to all of you that offered ideas, advice and personal experiences on my earlier post regarding tension issues etc. I've been having while trying to get my Batik quilt quilted on my HQ Sweet Sixteen. I just wanted to report back on where I'm at with it.

I was experiencing a problem with Glide thread I was using popping out of the upper tension discs intermittently, throwing off the tension, then snapping back in. I tried wrapping the thread twice around the tension discs as recommended by HQ, but still had inconsistent tension I thought perhaps caused by that. Today, I adjusted the last thread guide above the tension discs to increase the angle of the thread path going into the tension discs. My husband had suggested this and Prism99 had suggested an additional thread guide, which inspired me to take another look and listen to my husband's suggestion. It seems to have done the trick and I no longer need to wind the thread around twice. I've included a picture of that part of my machine to illustrate. The thread guide has a slot for the screw which allows for adjustment. It was set up with the guide positioned to the far right, the thread then went straight down into the tension discs, and with slippery thread and good opportunity to pop out. The picture shows where it is now, since adjusting it as far left as it would go. Funnily enough, when I discussed this with my neighbour and fellow Sweet Sixteen owner, she said that's where it is positioned on her machine. So mine had been set up differently. Who knew?!

Secondly, I have always had a big problem with bobbin backlash or over spin on my machine and have used the adjustment for the backlash spring to manage it fairly successfully until now. It is a real PITA for a few reasons, so I have heard/read about the bobbin genies for years being used to address this problem and have finally ordered some to try one out and hopefully put that to rest. I won't get them until next week, so I'll keep you posted on how that works for me. In the meantime, while stitching out test sandwiches trying to get the tension sorted using a new full bobbin, I finally had used up or pulled off about one third of the thread on it and the backlash settled down to the point I could actually back off the backlash spring, set my bobbin tension with my Towa gauge and was able to get a decent stitch as illustrated in the other two pics of the front and back of a section of my quilt where I stitched the cream thread on the cream fabric. YAY!!! Don't look too close, my stitching isn't perfect, but at this point I'm thrilled. Fingers crossed it will last and that the Bobbin Genie grants me my wish of banishing the backlash when it arrives 😉.