My Machine is Acting Strange During Free Motion
 

I'm working on free motion quilting and the past two days my machine has been strange. I don't even know how to describe this. I'll sew and it's going along fine. Then all of a sudden when the needle goes up there is extra thread with it. It looks like three lengths. It sounds like it's jamming but when I look the bobbin is fine. The tension is set at about 2.5 and the stitch length is 0.

Curious. did you try rethreading? New needle? Freshly wound bobbin? different thread? Cleaning out machine? Keep us posted.

clean it out well too. sometimes it is simply needing that or re-threading. good luck.

loosen the tension a bit. are the feed dogs down?

Are you using a good quality thread? I use Presencia.

Mine has done that too. On mine the bobbin drops into the case from the top. The bobbin is put on pulling the thread counterclockwise. You put it under the hook and then catch it on the left side. Sometimes it slips out from the left side and just pulls from the center. It won't lock the stitch. If yours is like mine, make sure that it "locks" when you catch it on the left. It happens when I am in automode and not really paying attention, since it is an automatic function in my brain.

You are stitching through your thread and you get it all twisted on the needle.... right? I have found I have the machine going to slow and my hands to fast when this happens. I have yet to figure out how that thread manages to get caught that way and I have tried many times to 'see' how it happens, but with no luck. My only solution was to speed up the machine and move the hands a little slower. Good luck!

I had this happen over the weekend but I was just sewing seams, not doing FMQ. I'm not sure why it did it but it happened when I was starting a seam without using a leader so my first stitch or two wasn't in the fabric. Were you running off the edge of your fabric when it happened? I had to take my bobbin complete out and rethread my machine.

Suzy