Trying to meander and THIS happened... (help)
 

Okay expert quilters, new quilter here. This is my FIRST TIME trying to meander. I'm working on a sewing machine cover. Sewing on a Singer 7436. I'm going along trying not to cross stitches, trying to keep my squiggles nice and tight-ish and even and I was pleased with the top considering it was my first time meandering. And then I flipped it over... SAD! This loopy stitch happened a few times. What is happening here and how do I fix it? Should I rip-it rip-it and re-do the ENTIRE thing?!

PS - This picture shows the bottom/back

Those are called eyelashes... You probably need to increase the tension and go a little slower. They will go away with the right tension and looooots of practice.

Your pattern looks great for your first go!!! It's hard to get consistent meandering.

This is the underneath side, right? Either your bobbin tension is too tight or your top tension too loose. Could the thread have jumped out of the tension disks? I would unthread both top and bobbin and thread over again. Pull on the bobbin thread when it's in the machine. Is it pulling out smoothly or does it seem to be hanging up somewhere? Are you moving the quilt sandwich too quickly for the speed you are sewing?

I would take it out. Good news is it will come out easily, cut that bobbin thread in a few places, you should be able to pull it out easily and then the top thread will come right out.

Check the things I suggested, then test it on a practice piece until it's flowing smoothly for you. Don't be discourage, it takes practice to get everything working together for FMQ, and your meandering is really nice for a first time!!!

I don't know if this is related or a completely separate problem but I assumed I was going too fast, so I tried to go slow on another part of the project. It's a smaller area so I was going to try to meander tighter. When I did that my sewing machine was skipping stitches or something. The top thread would completely miss the bobbin thread and then pick it up again. I did rip that out right away and took a picture and came straight here!

misskira - This has a NAME? Appropriate... it looks like eye lashes. It makes me feel better that this happens often enough to have a name. haha.

andir - This is the underneath. I'll try to rethread. My tension is set at "auto" right now. When I turn the dial it goes to + 1, +2, +3 and the other direction is - 1 -2 -3. What's the difference? And when I pull on the bobbin thread it's nice and smooth. Rethreading now then going to dinner. I'll check back tonight!

Those happen to everybody.

It may be your tension, it may be your speed (you need to find the right hand speed/needle speed ratio). You might even need to just go slower on curves, but you are good on straight-aways.

However, it could also be your needle (so put in a fresh one), or your fabric. I'm a somewhat experienced FMQer and got eyelashing on my last project. It only occurred on ONE fabric of a patchwork piece. The rest of the quilt everything was perfect. I ended up having to go really really slow, and ripping out a ton. Changing to a new needle helped a little bit, but it was a horrible pain. I had to turn the quilt over to check every section over this one fabric. I hadn't had any eyelashing like that in like 6-months, so I was not happy!

Good luck!

The one good thing about eyelashes...they don't take long to get pulled out and start over!

I would take that area out and redo the meander. The general rule with tension is: If the problem shows on the top, it is the bobbin tension that is off. It the problem is on the bottom, it is the upper tension. Since you are showing some areas where there are no eyelashes, I would say that your tension is actually fine but your speed is off. It takes a while to find that "sweet spot" where the speed of the machine and the speed of you moving your top come together. Happy practicing!

My machine does not like to FMQ sideways. I try to limit long stretches of horizontal stitching. It think it has something to do with the way the thread pulls through the needle when sewing in that direction.

This is totally not a tension problem. You're moving the quilt sandwich too fast for the speed of the needle. Fast needle, slow hands.

I used to have this problem, but when I slowed down no more eyelash stitches.