Machine Embroidery Sagas….

Lots of fun things happen when you’re doing large embroidery projects! You’re sailing along on your 30-something-th block, when you go to check your machine and for some reason, it’s stopped. You press start, and it won’t go; you use the thread cutter, it won’t go; you check the upper thread path, but nothing’s out of place. You only just replaced the bobbin, so you hit start anyway – and it still won’t start back up. Then you decide to check the bobbin just to be sure and – the hoop is sewn down onto the machine…. So you sit there, cutting through masses of thread to free the hoop from the machine, fingers crossed you don’t cut your project; then once it’s free you open the bobbin case, and see an absolute bird’s nest (or is it a rat’s nest at this point?) and start pulling and cutting away at that wad of thread too.

^{Imagine this wad of thread…}

^{… in this bobbin area. Not fun to see!}

I didn’t take photos of either, but I did get a photo of the wad after removal, and here’s a shot of the bobbin case too, so imagine at least that much thread wound around things in there, and a second wad between the hooped fabric and the machine bed… you can imagine what a mess it was – you’ve probably even had it happen yourself! And of course after I get it all cleaned up – there is no obvious reason for it to have happened. No broken needle, no broken thread, no slub in the fabric… just backed up the machine, re-started it and, it finished just fine. Can’t even tell there was a problem.

^{The scissors are pointing to the design element that chocked my machine; you can’t even tell it messed up, unless you run your finger over it; then you can feel it’s thicker. The machine then finished the remaining three circles, no problems. Go figure.}

Huh….

Well that was all, I just wanted to share that sometimes weird things happen with the machine, and there’s nothing wrong that you can find. Next time, a tip for marking and cutting blocks…