Joyfully sharing my quilting journey and other bits and pieces that make up daily life.
Saturday, November 2, 2019
A Word on Tension....
No, I don't mean stress but thread tension. I think I have figured out why the seams on my Postage Stamp blocks have been splitting when I didn't have this problem before - at least not to this extent.
When my Janome came back from service one of the first things I did was to make sure the thread tension looked balanced and that my stitches looked good and they did. So away I went on a sewing frenzy when it came to the strip piecing.
It was really disheartening to see my seams splitting on pretty much every segment that I had sewn together even when handling them with care. I changed the stitch length to a smaller size and racked my brain trying to think of what the problem could be.
I got it - finally. I think when the technician adjusted the tension and thread balance on my machine it was made too loose. I ran a test piece through the machine and when I tried to pull the two pieces of fabric apart I could see small gaps between the threads.
In order to get the thread tension correct I really needed to increase the tension on the bobbin - a lot. I was surprised because normally you would adjust the tension screw only slightly but I actually turned it probably a couple full revolutions. This is not normal! When I got it to where I thought it needed to be I adjusted the upper tension accordingly and loaded a bobbin with contrasting thread. I sewed some test samples and I fine tuned the upper tension using the contrasting thread to guide me.
My stitches look great, my test fabric looks great, and I no longer have the seam splitting issue. I sure wish I had thought about this sooner!!!!!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Oh no! I hope you called the technician and let them know. Glad you were able to figure it out and get it all fixed.
So glad you figured it out! My husband is skilled and can clean and oil my machines but when it comes to tension I need to step in. It's such a good feeling to get it working correctly! Happy Stitching!
I just got my machine back yesterday from being serviced. I'm having similar issues. Thanks for the timely post!
Post a Comment