MamaB

I have a Pfaff 360 and have been trying to FMQ but the results are getting worse with every try. I successfully quilted one top and was excited that it worked. I then did a second with minimal trouble. The tread jammed in the bobbin a quite a few times towards the end of my quilting but nothing I couldn't handle. Then I tried my third quilt and I can't seem to get anywhere with it. The thread not only jams in the bobbin but the top thread is breaking and now I just broke my needle. I have tried different thread, making new bobbins, changing the needle, adjusting the tension etc. I have tried to lloosen the upper tension but that only made my needle break. It seems that as I sew the thread in the tension disks gets very tight to where I can't even pull on the tread easily. Also my zigzag stitch is unusable - it bunches up completely but the straight stitch looks good. I can't tell you how discouraged I am. I finally have a good feel for the motion and the petal control and feel pretty confident about my FMQ skills but my machine is acting like a naughty child. If you have one of these machines and have done FMQ with it PLEASE help me. My next option is to give up on this machine and try my mother-in-laws Bernina Activa.

Candace

I have a 362 which is basically this machine, but it has the stopmatic feature. It FMQs beautifully. It sounds like you have a thread jammed somewhere. If you were able to do it great with a top and then not, 'something' happened. You need to look closely with a flashlight, if need be. Look carefully around the hook area to make sure there's not a thread wound around the hook race and take off the top of the machine and look down into it and see if there are any threads stuck anywhere.

When did you last clean, de-lint and oil it?

MamaB

Okay, so I took your advice and am attempting to clean the machine. I didn't find any threads but did find a bit of gunk to clean off. I guess I will just continue to clean it. If this doesn't work I don't know what I will do. I am starting to think that maybe I am the problem. I went to my MIL's today to use her Bernina. I thought maybe it would be able to FMQ but it was very finicky. I couldn't even get it to start sewing most of the time. I was able to make one almost perfect line of quilting when I first started but then it wouldn't work at all. So I put the regular presser foot back on and it worked great but as soon as I changed the foot to my fmq foot and lowered the feed dogs it stopped working. I have a bunch of beautiful quilt tops now and no way to quilt them

JBeamer

How awful for you. Don't have any tips except clean it and rethread it. Good luck. Hope you find the problem.

MamaB

I gave my machine a thorough cleaning and oiling. It worked better than ever when I tested it. The zigzag stitch was beautiful (I haven't been able to use it up to this point) and the straight stitch looked good too. I finally worked up the courage to try again to try fmq this morning. I worked alright on the sample practice square so I tried my quilt. I didn't get very far before my needle broke again. I re-threaded, got a new needle and tried again on my practice square and the bottom thread was extremely loose and terrible looking. I re-threaded again, and it looked slightly better but not great. One thing I did notice when I was cleaning it was on the needle plate it appears to be very scratched around the needle hole (from needles breaking?) I am very disappointed I have heard people with this same machine talk about how great they are and how they were able to quilt with not a single problem. I checked for stray threads when I was cleaning it and couldn't find any. I does appear to work better with a fresh bobbin. It seems to get worse as the bobbin gets about half full.

Candace

Have you read the manual and are you certain you have it threaded properly and the bobbin inserted correctly? This machine is not especially easy to thread and the bobbin needs to be going the correct way for the best tension. It's possible you are jerking and pulling on your fabric or that you now have a burr in the needle plate from breaking so many needles. If you're having the same problem on multiple machines, like you've stated, I would suggest it's not necessarily a sewing machine issue but a human being issue:> Have you taken any FMQ classes or watched some of the free YouTube videos?

Also, your local quilt shop and dealer may be able to tell you from watching you in person what's wrong.