a friend has the same longarm as i have. the tin lizzie 18sl.

she has never had problems with it before, but now she's getting loopies all over the back. she checked the tension, rethreaded, changed the needle, cleaned everything (she does that between every quilt, anyway). still can't get it to cooperate.

any suggestions?

The only times I have had loopies is when the tension os off. It may be just a hair off, but it happens. Also there may be a small thread caught somewhere on the path of the thread, affecting the tension.

One more suggestion is to try with different threads and see if you still get the loopies.

Maria

i suggested all that. she's trying again. with that it's always been tension, because of thread change. thanks.

I have had problems like that at times.......I have the Hobby Quilter by Nolting..............I have had the "loopie" problem at times, and I found it was the thread. If I changed the thread it sewed fine, so she might want to try that also.

barb

i'll let her know. thanks.

I had that problem after a "long" day at a machine quilting class. I discover that the problem was "cheap" thread and that my bobbin area was a mess and clogged up with short pieces of thread. Once it was thoroughly cleaned out, I had no further problem. It made me a believer about using good quality (yes, I know the expensive stuff) thread.

Everytime I've had a loopy on the bottom is cause of top tension.
Now I've learned to put a scrap on the side to practice
before I start to quilt.
It saves alot of time.
I learned the hard way & alot of ripping out to look under the quilt more often to see what going on under there

I love your avatar. I also have a Boston Terrier named Cow. He is known all over town.

Maria

I would suggest she put a drop of oil on the bobbin hook. Without thread in the machine and the case out of the bobbin run the machine at full speed. She may have a piece of lint caught and this will throw it out.

Also, put a tiny drop of oil on the end of your finger and rub this on the outside of the bobbin case.

If none of the above suggestions help then I would say the machine is out of time.

I had thread issues once, it was working fine, but apparently there was a section of the spool that was not "right" and after trying everything I threw out the remaining thread and had no more problems.

Hi butterflywing,
The website that you pm'd (Y.G.) me has a tutorial by Joe that may help.

that was my next step. thanks.

i'm going to have that same problem soon myself. i'll be trying invisible thread for the first time.

i couldn't find that tutorial, but i found some other answers and passed them along. she can't join yahoo groups because she doesn't have yahoo!

i just heard from her and her heart is beating again, but she does have to remove the stitches from about 7/8 of a large lap quilt.

she has been having trouble with the regular-size spools of coats/clarks
signature quilting threads. not with the thread itself, but the spool has those little bumps around the top edge and also the notch for the end of the thread. the way the tin lizzie winds off the spool is straight up, so her thread was catching on all those things. so she bought something called a 'spool cap' (i think - maybe a 'thread cap'?) which holds the thread away from the bumps. when she realized that that was the only thing that was different, she took off that cap. duh! and voila! everything is copacetic once
again. :thumbup: :thumbup:

Glad to hear that she figured out what the problem was.
Just wanted to thank you for those websites, they've been a great help with my TL 18 !!! :D