Tuesday, July 17, 2012

A couple more yesterday

 Got this one quilted yesterday but boy did it give me some troubles.  I was about 3/4 of the way through the way through the quilt and all of a sudden there was a clunk on the machine and the thread broke.  The machine jumped and scared me.  I'm not sure what happened, but I figured it hit a seam or the needle hit the foot or something and then when I tried to re-thread it, the thread just broke and the needle made a couple weird holes in the quilt top.  I felt the tip of the needle and it had a burr on it so it was time to change the needle.  I know I'm probably bad, but I don't change needles as often as is suggested. I have read online that you are supposed to change needles after every quilt, or after every couple hours sewing, or at least once a week (at the rate I sew), but I can't even remember the last time I changed my needle.  It was so bad that I couldn't remember which direction to put the needle in.  That's the only thing I don't like about my machine.  I have a Janome 1600P DB and it has a round top needle, so you can put it in sideways or backwards just as easily as you can the right way and there isn't a picture on the machine to remind you how to put it in the right way.  It has a groove on one side and a little dip on the other.  The groove goes on the left and the dip on the right.  I should remember because the thread wants to travel down the groove into the hole and come out the dip.  Maybe I will write it on my machine, so 100 quilts from now, I will remember.  I put a needle in and tried and tried to get it right, but the thread kept breaking.  I finally had to look up the directions on line.  Once I got the needle in the right way, I was off again and it was so nice to sew with a new needle :)  It's like cutting with a new rotary cutter blade.  You put up with the old, dull one for so long and then when you finally switch out to a new one think, why did I wait so long?  I have a blade sharpener that I like a lot.  I got it half price at JoAnn's and it is just a little manual one, but it really does make the blade sharper.  It doesn't work forever and eventually I do have to put a new blade in, but it sharpens the blade several times before I have to buy a new one.  Every penny helps.
And one more quilt, just to test and make sure the new needle works.  Yep, no thread breaking.

Oh, and those feet I ordered for my machine, way back on July 4?  Well, I checked yesterday because they still haven't come in the mail yet.  They are out of stock.  I never got an email saying they weren't coming, so I emailed the company and let them know I wasn't happy with them.  They should have let me know they weren't sending them yet.  I'm doing ok not having the foot, but the thread still does catch on the foot when I move to the left at 45 degrees so I have to be careful when I am quilting not to move in that direction.  I'm just really frustrated that a company wouldn't say they didn't have something in stock.  I went back to see if they put it online and sure enough, you can still order the feet and there is no sign they are out of stock on the website either.  I won't be ordering from this company in the future.  They never responded to my email either.  Bad business practices.
This is the website I ordered from in case you are wondering.
https://www.sewingpartsonline.com/

They had the best price on the Janome feet, but I'd rather have the feet when I need them for $5 more and not have to wait 2 weeks to get them.  Disappointed :(

The least they could have done was send me an email to explain they were out of stock so I could make a decision to order somewhere else or wait.

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