Originally Posted by lorli

Everyone must be getting tired of my problems with trying to machine quilt for the 1st time but I have more...sigh...

[Thanks, everyone for your help. I was trying to machine quilt a single size bed quilt to give to my "honorary niece" for Christmas. After the first few seams in the ditches, there were pleats/tucks at the places where the stitching lines crossed.]

I took out all of the quilting and started again, using the advice from here including decreasing the foot pressure and upper thread tension, and did (from center out) 5 or 6 seams, some length- and some widthwise. So far so good. Then the machine made a funny noise and there were birds nests of thread on the back.

I cleaned the bobbin case and took out the seam, tried again and the same thing happened, BUT when I tested it out on my sample sandwich, it s always perfectly fine. This has happened 3 times. Each time, the sample comes out fine.

To top it al off: I decided to stop for now (so much for finishing by Christmas) and was folding the quilt when I noticed that the stitching of the very first seam looked strange. I pulled gently at a stitch and a long piece the top thread came out (like opening a feed bag).

Does anyone have any idea what is wrong? I suppose it needs servicing. It is a Janome 6600 and the place where I bought it is gone.