I have three tops pieced, and I was quilting the table runner for my mom for Christmas when my 1 year old machine made a growling noise and just stopped working. It took about 15 minutes for me to pry my 1/3 of the way quilted top out of the machine without ripping or pulling threads.

I called the local machine shop and it'll be up to 3 weeks before they can get my machine in for service!!

I'm just so upset right now - these are all supposed to be Christmas gifts and there's no way I'm a fast enough hand quilter to get two 45x65 tops done!

I took out my old machine, a White, and it keeps having tension issues so I'm horribly frustrated right now and my husband (as good as he is) just doesn't "get" it as to why I'm so upset. It's because I worked for HOURS on the tops and I wanted to give them to my BIL and SIL for Christmas since we haven't seen them in 5 years!

Thanks for letting me vent - I needed to get this off my chest to people who do understand! I'll be popping back on and let you all know if I get the tension issues fixed. :(

Give them anyway, with a card saying you have to take them home to finish, then you will mail to them---I have to do that this year--I have FOUR machines down!

This will get better but it is a sad thing with your sewing machine growls at you.

I am assuming you checked out all the usual things that can cause a machine to freeze up, such as a tiny piece of thread stuck in the bobbin case....

I figured I would mention it just in case.

So sorry this happened. Do you have a friend who sews that maybe you could borrow their machine?

Your machine is only a year old is it out of warrantee already? Because you mentioned sewing repair place, I am assuming you did not get this machine from a dealer. Often a dealer can try and walk you through steps over the phone to try and get her up and running again.

This has a whole lot to do with why I never give quilts as Christmas gifts. Whatever can go wrong will.

The machine repair place was the dealer. It's a Singer Confidence machine and when I called they thought it might be a part that had "popped out of place"

I pulled everything apart that I could, pulled out the bobbin case, cleaned it with the brush, and didn't see any thread. There was some lint, but that wasn't the issue apparently. It's the mechanism that makes the needle go up and down that is just stuck. :(

Thanks for the advice!

Take pictures of the tops - give them an IOU and bake some cookies or make some candy to give to them.

Can you buy a cheap back up machine to finish them off?

I agree. Anyone receiving a whole quilt for a gift is a truly blessed person! Give them a photo to hold onto until you can get them finished. They surely will understand "mechanical difficulties."
If however, you don't want to do this, try getting one of the 'cheapies' that sell for under $100 at Walmart etc, even some Hardware stores have them. It will help you finish, and you'll have a reliable backup machine should a crisis happen again.

Must be the season for sewing machines to act up.
Mine froze up on me this Monday - also looked in all the places I usually look for problems. Off to the repair place - at least two weeks before I'd get it back.