I refuse to give up

I just can't give up on this machine. I woke up this morning thinking that I hadn't tried taking the feed dog cover off and replacing it with a piece of cardboard. The little hole in that metal plate is very tiny and after replacing the needle with a size 18 yesterday, there was this horrible screaming sound of metal on metal. I didn't get a chance to tell the place I bought it from about that horrible sound, but after thinking about it overnight, I figured the needle had to be scraping on something. I figured that since I hadn't tried that yet, it wouldn't hurt to try. I replaced the metal cover and taped down a piece of cardboard with a hole in it. The machine was squeaking and squealing so I oiled it. I read in the book that you are supposed to oil it every day if you use it a lot. I guess 12 hours in one day is considered a lot. The machine was running funny, slowing down and speeding up and making horrible noises and I thought, well, either I'm going to break the thing or it is going to work for me. Either way, I'm not
giving up. The thread broke 2 times on that first quilt and once on the next quilt. I was going as fast as I could go and turning corners and trying to get the thread to break. I was daring it to break. I think I figured out what the problem was. Of course, I had to push my luck and try the cheaper thread. I tried the essentials thread that is only $2 a spool for 1200 yards and it broke about 10 times on the slow speed and I could tell when it was going to break, if I went around a corner too fast. This was a big difference from yesterday, when it broke if I looked at it funny.

So, maybe I won't be sending the machine back. I'm not ready to say I've completely solved the problem. I am going to try several more quilts once my back rests, but these are the quilts I've quilted since getting the machine. Can you imagine how many I will be able to do once I get the dumb thing figured out? 9 quilts in 2 days when it doesn't work right!

I will be calling the company on Monday to have them send me a new feed dogs cover for sure at the very least and to order some thread.

Just a word of encouragement to everyone out there who has been frustrated with your machine. Don't give up. Try everything and then try it again. You are smarter than a machine!