Welcome to the QB from SE Michigan! You will find many very helpful folks here. As far as your bobbin issue it does sound like it is not threaded into the machine properly. I have a number of Brothers machines and they all thread the same way. Your manual is you best friend with this issue. If you continue to have a problem after following closely the manual I would call the customer service tech department and have them walk you through it. If that doesn't work the maybe there is a problem with the machine. Mostly it is a threading issue. Welcome again to the QB. I hope to see a great deal of you here.