About 50% of the way into doing free motion on the J6300, it started to break thread. I tried everything and every little nuance I could think of - change needle, change thread, change bobbin tension, change top tension, do odd incantation, I tried it all. I read one idea which was to let the horizontally wound thread wind off horizontally and rigged up a way it could easily do that, as that is what the thread folks recommend, and that did help the thread to come off more easily - I could tell the improvement, however it only allowed a few more inches to be sewn without a breakage. Fellow quilters and people with a lot more experience than I have gave me a myriad of ideas, and reading quilting forums did as well. Some of those ideas I have filed away and some I tried. Some ideas have other uses and are great. One idea was to put the ironing board up on the side of my sewing - on the left - as a better surface for the quilt to rest upon. Great idea, but it didn't help the quilting. However, it is a great idea and I am doing it on the Pfaff. I think partially the batting - being rather slubby in portions, and the backing being slubby as well - well, that didn't help. But the fact that 50% went fairly well tells me that when I have time, and maybe a different quilt sandwich that isn't as heavy as a flannel quilt with thick Warm and Natural batting, well then I can probably do some nice FMQ on this Janome 6300. Meanwhile I finished the quilt on the Pfaff. I have to say that FM on the Pfaff is a complete no issue undertaking - the Pfaff sews whatever you put under the foot, and it has more harp space than the Janome if you count the height of the machine itself - I can get more quilt through that baby. It handles whatever thread you want to use top and bottom, and I used King Tut on top and Masterpiece in the bobbin, but it will sew with any thread I have ever tried. I had no thread breakage and no problems at all. I finished the quilt top today. Now to finish the other quilt - that one is getting straight line quilting on the Janome, and going along nicely with the walking foot. I love the speed with which the Janome can do these stitch in the ditch lines. Now to begin making the binding. Going to bind it on the Janome using the walking foot, as I did on my first quilt last year.
This is the way to get a horizontal spool to run off its thread correctly on a machine with a thread antennae and the thread spool pins below the level of the top of the machine. I used three spool caps and a drinking straw I cut down. Two spool caps under the spool of King Tut and one on top. Luckily I have several machines (and the Superior Thread thread holder which has several gizmos with it) here to use the accessories of for something like this, and three diameters of drinking straws. I didn't realize I had the three types of straws. Good to have these odd things on hand! This was a suggestion on a forum somewhere on the web about difficulties quilting with a Janome 6600, so this family of machines has been talked about a lot on the web and there are a lot of helpful people out there adding to our knowledge. I imagine this is true of whatever machine you buy these days. By the way you notice that you bypass the thread antennae and leave them down for this application. You thread directly into the first thread holder on the machine itself.
2 comments:
I'm glad you were eventually able to find success, even if it had to be on another machine. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to have thread break with no explanation and nothing fixes it!
Thank you for your comment. :) It was frustrating, but the Pfaff is in good shape, and sews like a dream without fuzz. The Janome is great too, and I just whizzed out lines all the way down the second quilt at 6" intervals using the Janome with it's walking foot - a dream to sew on! No problems. So something about the flannel quilt or the thread was not up to the Janome's par - probably my technique! I will try again though for sure! Thanks again...:)
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