Originally Posted by bstanbro

I'm making flannel stars and sewing together small pieces of flannel fabric stitching from corner to corner. The problem I'm having is that the needle pushes the fabric down into the throat hole, gumming up the works and breaking the thread. I'm using a size 80/12 universal needle (new) and cotton thread. Is there a way to prevent this from happening? And why is it happening? It seems to be a problem with the flannel, because I can't recall this happening with regular fabric. Any ideas would be appreciated. Maybe there's some technique I'm unaware of?