Originally Posted by
mama's place
I have a new to me long arm machine and am having some trouble with the bobbin becoming jammed. Don't know how else to explain it. The thread won't pull so that the machine can be moved forward. Wonder what is causing that. After reading your comments above, I am going to check some of those ideas as possible solutions. So frustrating trying to trouble shoot when we don't know what is causing the problem. Thanks for any helpful hints.
Do you mean you can't pull up the bobbin thread? Can't understand the way you are explaining it. So say you were quilting along and now you want to stop and tie off your threads and you can't move the machine head because the bobbin thread won't release? If that is the case, check the position of your take up lever. It should be almost all the way up with say about a finger width between the top of the machine head and where the take up lever is resting. Sometimes, even with your needle up, that take up lever hasn't done a full cycle and isn't in the fully up position it is sitting at the half way point. My machine has a jog function that resets it so the take up lever is in the fully up position when my needle is up and I have stopped the machine. If your machine doesn't have that, you have to manually turn hand crank to get that take up lever in the fully up position which will release your bobbin thread.