As most machines do these days, mine picks it up when you start stitching. And when we (in class) were making our quilt tops, we didn't have to do anything with it, just sew.

When we starting quilting our tops yesterday, on each seam, the teacher had us manually pick up the bobbin. (Which made me crazy, as sometimes I had trouble with it). Why did she have us do this?

Thanks and sorry for the newbie question!

I think it is because some of the older machines would make a little thread "nest" at the beginning of the seam if you didn't hold on to the thread.

Yes, what she said. And it does it on my newer one as well.

Any hints as to how to do this without getting frustrated? Sometimes it was easy to do and sometimes I just couldn't get the loop or it was too tiny to grab.

Thanks!

You might want to keep a pair of tweezers by your machine when doing this. It helps to be able to reach under the foot and grab a thread that just isn't being cooperative. :)

The more experience you get, the easier it gets. Just get in the habit of pulling that thread through and it won't be long and you'll be doing it in your sleep.

There's an easy way to do it. Place your fabric, take one stich then use a needle to pull the bobbin thread through. Here's a video... Ignore the 1st part. Towards the last third it has a demonstration. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDERq...eature=related

Thanks for the video link.
And thanks to everyone who responded! :)

I bought a Juki for machine quilting and if I don't pull up the bobbin thread first I'll be picking a mess out of the back.

You don't have to. I have not been doing it with my SID (because I didn't know to) and you can tell all the stops and starts due to the little lumpies - not bad, just annoying. A few weeks ago I read about the bobbin thread being pulled and have been playing with it. As long as you have a flat something to help pull the thread up it's not really a problem. I can hardly wait to dump the lumpies.