A Cautionary Tale

While I was working on my last quilt, I had MAJOR difficulty once I got to the quilting.  Kept getting skipped stitches.  Sometimes just one here and there, and sometimes big huge spaces of skipped stitches, like an inch long! 

This had never happened to me on my old machine.  And my old machine is OLD.  Probably 20 years old, at least.

My little mechanical wonder - Bernina 1001
(not my actual machine...this is a photo of my exact machine from the web)


So because I had never had this problem before, I had no idea what was causing it.  I was seriously at a loss.  My worst fear was that my four-month-old, super expensive, brand new Christmas present from my lover husband had already gone on the fritz and that I was going to have to take it in to have it serviced already.  But I wasn't willing to jump to that conclusion right away.

My second thought was that maybe the problem was because of the thickness of the quilt and my lack of a walking foot.  But honestly, the quilt sandwich wasn't really thick at all. 

Hmmmm.

After wrestling with my machine for over an hour on some stupid, simple, straight-line quilting, I decided that the problem had to be my worst fear and I was going to have to pack up my machine and take it in.  But I had to get this quilt done, so I pulled out my trusty 1001 and decided to finish on that machine. 

Man, have I been spoiled with my new machine.  While I love my 1001, and it is a wonderful little machine, my new one (an Artista 730) is just....well...SO much better.

I decided before throwing my hands up and giving up I would try one last thing:

I would read the manual.

And this is what it said:

Really?  All I had to do was change the needle?  Really?

Yikes.  Now I feel really dumb.

So I changed the needle and guess what?  No more skipped stitches!

And so now, I have made a vow.  Repeat with me:

"When I have a problem with my machine I will read the manual."

And now I need to go so I can copy that on the chalkboard 100 times.