LAL#4: The One Where I Organized My Pantographs, Apprehended a Worn Eyelet Guide, and Discovered Anti-Vibration Pads

Outreach Tumbler Quilt, 40" x 54", Wild at Heart Pantograph

Hello and Happy Tuesday!  Welcome back to the Long Arm Learning linky party!  I have to say, I am learning so much from what you all have been linking up here each week.  Cheree of The Morning Latte and Katy of KatyQuilts both linked up posts with terrific tips for choosing beginner-friendly pantograph patterns.  Reading through their suggestions, I realized that my disappointing pantograph attempts when I first got my long arm machine three years ago owed a lot to the pantograph patterns I was trying to quilt.  I wanted a "breather" after the intensive custom quilting I'd just finished on my Sermon Scribbles quilt, and I had a small outreach tumbler quilt top waiting in my Quilt Purgatory closet that needed to get finished so it can be donated to the pediatric ward of one of our local hospitals to cheer up a child with a life-threatening illness.  I decided this was the perfect time to take another shot at following a pantograph pattern from the back of my machine.

Although I've only quilted pantographs on a couple of quilt tops before, I already had a collection of about 40 pantograph patterns that I'd purchased from another quilter who had moved to a computerized system.  I had been told that pantographs were the easiest way for a new long arm quilter to learn, so I purchased all of these in one big lot rather than selecting designs individually that appealed to me.  I didn't even know what all I had, they were jumbled in a cupboard, and I had to unroll them one at a time if I wanted to see what they looked like.  

So actually my biggest accomplishment this week is that I went through all of those pantographs, located images of all of them on the manufacturer's web sites, and also managed to locate photos of almost all of the designs stitched onto an actual quilt so I could get a better idea of what each one looked like.  I found that, especially with the "beginner-rated" patterns, a lot of the pantographs that look pretty lame as a line drawing actually look really effective sewn into a quilt, so in each of the clear page protectors I have the line drawing of a pantograph pattern on one side and a photo of that design quilted out on a quilt on the reverse side.  

Then I printed out all of those pictures in full color (my husband is still mad at me about the printer ink) and organized them into a binder by subject.  I also ordered a few more pantograph patterns to fill "holes" in my collection, making sure I have a nice assortment of versatile, mostly very forgiving, beginner friendly patterns that Cheree and Katy would approve of.  And Nancy from Grace and Peace quilting, who is also a computerized quilter these days, very graciously offered to send me even MORE beginner-friendly pantograph patterns to try, which just arrived in today's mail.  YIPPEE!!!  

Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not turning my back on custom quilting and ruler work.  I just want to have other options in my "quilter's tool box" because not every quilt needs or can have 100 hours or more of quilting in it.  I want a speedier method for finishing charity quilts, everyday bed quilts, and quilts like Spirit Song Sermon Scribbles where the piecing design and prints were so strong, custom quilting wasn't going to show up much anyway.  

Also, although I read Cheree's and Katy's advice about picking beginner pantograph patterns and did take it to heart (pun!), I didn't end up choosing a very beginner friendly pattern for this quilt.  That's because, even though I'd gotten a lot of patterns from that other quilter, none of the other patterns seemed like it would enhance this quilt top as much as Wild at Heart.  The other patterns I had that seemed easier were either the wrong scale for my 4" tumbler blocks, or they were designs that looked too grownup for the playful novelty prints.  I know this would look so much better if a more experienced pantograph quilter (or a computerized quilter) stitched it out so the long curves would be smoother and the echo lines would be spaced more evenly and accurately -- but all in all, it came out better than I expected.  Which is a good thing, since that pale lavender Glide thread really stands out against the deep purple solid!  

Again, I knew that this highly contrasting thread wasn't going to be very forgiving of my wobbles and bobbles, but I like the way the pale quilting thread breaks up the solid, somber eggplant solid, softens the harsh geometry of the geometric piecing design, and adds some whimsy that complements the juvenile conversation prints.  The photo above shows the quilt after machine binding with a zigzag stitch (wish my machine binding looked neater!) and a tumble through the laundry machines.  I don't have a full size finish photo to share because it was already dark out by the time this came out of the dryer!

I have two little tidbits to share with y'all today.  First, even thought I was using 40 weight Glide thread that my long arm machine adores, it started shredding and snapping on me with this quilt, worse and worse.  This was driving me crazy and really slowing me down, until I finally stopped to check my thread path.  Check out this groove that had worn into the eyelet thread guide just above my needle:

This groove must have been worn into the thread guide gradually over time.  I'd heard that this can happen, but never seen it on my own machine before.  That little eyelet guide costs all of $1.50 from APQS and I've ordered a replacement as well as a spare.  In the meantime, to keep me quilting and happy, my husband had the idea to just rotate that thread guide 180 degrees so the thread rubs on the opposite side of the eyelet, away from the groove that was shredding my thread.  Brilliant!

I also experimented successfully with adding anti-vibration pads under the legs of my long arm frame to reduce the vibration I was feeling from my machine at higher speeds.  My husband thinks this has less to do with my long arm machine than it does with the way the ceiling of our garage/floor of my "bonus room" studio was framed out when our house was built, and he thinks that I might experience less vibration if my machine wasn't set up perpendicular to the floor joists.  Well, I'm not ready to rearrange the whole studio on that hunch, but I did some online research about and ran across an Innova dealer who was selling industrial anti-vibration pads on her web site.  So we went out to Home Depot and bought a set of four of these things for less than $20.  The ones I got are made of rubber and MDF and are sold for use on air compressors that can vibrate to the extreme that they go bouncing away from you when you turn them on.  Anyway, I slipped one of these under each leg of my frame about midway through this quilt, and OH MY GOSH, what a huge difference!!  Definitely a noticeable reduction of the vibration at higher speeds, which translated into me instantly getting better at following a curve smoothly now that my machine wasn't bouncing!!  Wish I'd discovered these little magic squares AGES ago!  The pads I bought at Home Depot are Husky Heavy-Duty Vibration Pads for Air Compressors and my local store had them in stock, but you can find similar products on Amazon here.  

And Now, Let's Party!

I'm linking up today's post with my favorite linky parties:

WEDNESDAY

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

FRIDAY

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

·       Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More

·       Finished Or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

·       Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

·       TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: http://tgiffriday.blogspot.ca/p/hosting-tgiff.html

That's enough from me for today!  I want to hear what all of YOU have been up to with your quilting this week!  If you're linking up on Instagram, please use hashtag #longarmlearning! 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Machine Applique Progress and Continued Long Arm Tweaking

Testing, tinkering and troubleshooting makes for boring blog posts, which is why I haven't posted in awhile.  Last night I took a break from all of that and spent some time playing with the machine appliqué project from Karen Kay Buckley's workshop.

Leaf By Leaf, KKB Workshop Project Coming Together

I'm enjoying the prepared edge, invisible machine stitched technique and the prep time really is minimal compared to other methods I've tried.  The reason this project isn't finished yet is that I've been having so much fun (and wasting so much TIME!) digging through scrap bins to find the perfect fabric for each little leaf.  But then, once I've preturned the edges of each piece and glue-basted it in place on my background fabric, the actual stitching part is a breeze.  Since I brought my Bernina 475QE Goldilocks machine to the workshop, I've been continuing with that machine now that I'm working on this at home.

Bernina 475QE Settings for Invisible Machine Applique

I have YLI Wonder invisible monofilament thread in the needle as well as in the bobbin, and I'm using a size 60 Microtex needle.  I am using a modified version of the Invisible Machine Appliqué stitch found in my machine's Quilting menu, with the stitch width reduced to 0.7 and the stitch length reduced to 0.55.  With monofilament thread in the top AND bobbin, no tension adjustments were necessary.  Once I got the length and width dialed in, I saved the altered stitch in my Personal Programs folder so I can get to it quickly whenever I'm doing this technique.  For this project, since my background fabric is very dark in some places and very light in others, I'm alternating between the Clear and Smoke monofilament depending on the background fabric in the area where I'm sewing down each shape.  I'm using Open Embroidery Foot #20 to give me a really clear view of where every stitch is landing, and of course, since this is a sideways motion stitch, I've got the regular 5.5 mm stitch plate on my machine rather than the straight stitch needle plate that I like to use for piecing.

Open Embroidery Foot #20 for Great Visibility

Meanwhile, on the other side of the studio...

The fine-tuning and tweaking of my APQS Millennium longarm quilting machine continues.  My husband Bernie gave her a thorough maintenance and cleaning as per APQS Tech Support instructions and she's moving more smoothly along the rails.  Upper tension adjustments are working much better since he disassembled and rebuilt the tension assembly.  And the erratic motor speed issue has improved since he replaced a cable, but I'm not sure it's completely resolved.  He replaced my L "Smart Hook" assembly with the larger M Hook assembly and retimed the machine, and I'm still deciding how I feel about that.  I feel like there's more noise under there now, like rattling operation, but when I take out the bobbin case and check for any play in the hook collar area everything is tight and rock-solid, just as it should be, and the timing is perfect.  So now I'm wondering whether a brand new hook needs more oil right out of the gate and that's why it seems loud or whether I'm paranoid and imagining things now??  I'm hoping to get a charity cuddle top on the frame this afternoon so I can see how the machine does quilting an actual project rather than a sample sandwich of muslin.

Another thing I'm still on the fence about is the Texas Hold 'Em Bracket I got so I could remove the quilt top roller from my frame.  Here's what Millie looked like before, with the top roller in place:

My APQS Millennium with Quilt Top Roller in Place

The quilt top roller is the one with blue painter's tape on it.  I've experimented with pinning my quilt tops to that roller versus doing a full float method where nothing gets attached to that roller at all, and I've found that the full float method is working better for me.  Since I'm not using that roller at all, it's kind of in my way when I'm quilting, and the Texas Hold 'Em bracket was designed to preserve the functionality of the hand brake with that top roller removed:

APQS Texas Hod 'Em Bracket, Place Holder for the Quilt Top Roller

What's going to take some getting used to is relearning how far I can keep quilting before the throat of my machine hits the pickup roller.  Just because the top roller is gone doesn't mean my machine can reach farther forward than it did before:

This Is the Closest the Machine Reaches Before the Pickup Roller Hits the Machine Throat

See what I mean?  It's not that I actually have less workspace, it's just that I was using the quilt top roller as a visual reference before and, now that it's gone, it LOOKS like I should be able to quilt another 6" closer to my tummy.  So that will take getting used to!  The quilt top roller was really annoying me on the Mission Impossible quilt, when I was quilting all those horizontal lines with rulers and I had to reach my hand over the quilt top roller and hold my wrist in weird positions to use the rulers.  I'm also thinking that it might be easier to work with wool batting and double battings without that bar there, since I'll be able to lift the quilt top out of my way and visually check that the batting is smooth and even each time I advance the quilt.  But it's easy enough to put that quilt top bar back on the frame if I ever decide I want to use it again.

So anyway, I have two possible outreach cuddle quilt tops that I could load today, one that is just giant checkerboard squares in Christmas prints and the other is the purple novelty fabric I Spy  top that my mom pieced a few months ago.  A friend from my quilting bee loaned me a set of Groovy Boards to try and I was thinking of using those on one or both of these tops, but with so many new variables at play I'm not sure I'm in the right mindset to learn how to use the new tools, if you know what I mean.

Meanwhile, we're moving my oldest son into his college dorm for the first time in less than TWO WEEKS!!  I'm not going to really believe that until we're driving away from the college, leaving him behind.  Weird, weird, weird!!  And then we have a family wedding the following weekend, and then school starts up again for my youngest son, the rising high school Junior.  Summer goes faster every year, doesn't it?

I'm linking up with:

SUNDAY

·      Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com

MONDAY

·      Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com 

·      Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/

·      Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/

·      Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/

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·      BOMs Away at Katie Mae Quilts: https://www.katiemaequilts.com/blog/ 

Millie's DIY Spa Staycation With Bernie, My Reluctant Sewing Machine Technician

It is amazing how quickly a man who is not interested in taking apart your sewing machine changes his tune upon learning how EXPENSIVE it is to ship the darned thing back to the factory to have it worked on by someone else.  Meet my newly cooperative sewing machine technician:

He's Not Just a Cutie; He's HANDY!!

My husband Bernie can take just about anything apart and put it back together again to get it working: lawn mowers, ovens, cars, air conditioning units, computers, commercial espresso machines...  We were all scheduled to send Thoroughly Modern Millie (my 2013 APQS Millennium longarm quilting machine) back to the Iowa factory for "Spa Servicing" -- but I had a change of heart.  The folks at APQS say that a spa visit (factory refurbishing, essentially) isn't necessary until a machine has seen 9-10 years of heavy, daily use in a business setting.  Although my machine was used as a rental in an APQS dealer's shop before I adopted her in 2017, that's only 3 years of heavy business use and I've only quilted a few quilts in the two years I've had her.  SO...  There's really no way she needs to have all of her guts swapped out for new parts yet.

So last week we got out the manual, turned to the back with the Maintenance and Troubleshooting appendices are located, got on the APQS forum to see what has worked for others facing similar issues, and Bernie took the covers off my machine and got busy with his tools!  Here's what all we did:

• Wiped down the rails, cleaned the wheels, removed the needle plate cover, and cleaned the hook assembly area
• Checked the hook for burrs, found a burr that could be classified as a gouge, and filed it smooth with emery cord
• Checked the thread guides and needle plate for nicks, burrs or grooves (did not find any)
• Gave the hook a WD-40 "bath" and re-oiled it
• Checked the encoder wheel and adjusted it to the tightest position
• Checked the motor brushes and blew out the carbon dust from the motor
• Checked that the wicks were touching moving parts inside the machine head and adjusted the one that wasn't touching anything
• Adjusted the needle positioner
• Adjusted the hopping foot height (and finally got the foot level this time)
• Checked and adjusted the mag collar sensor
• Removed, disassembled, and reassembled the tensioner device

Basically, we did our own Spa Visit at home.  As expected for a machine that's only a few years old, my Millennium did NOT need all of her wear and tear parts replaced.  Thread guides were fine, motor brushes were fine (previous owner may have already replaced them because they are nearly brand new), and I didn't find any grooves or issues with any of the thread guides.  Angie at APQS Tech Support helped us over the phone and emailed PDF instructions with very clear photos that were a huge help.

The biggest issues we found were:

• The encoder wheel needing adjusting to snug back up to the carriage again, because the little rubber wheel was worn enough that it wasn't always in contact with the carriage when the machine was moving.  That can cause irregularities in stitch length in regulated mode.  
• The gouge in the hook.  I don't think I've ever broken a needle on this machine since it's belonged to me, but SOMEONE did!  Perhaps it happened when someone was renting the machine before I purchased it.  The APQS manual says that, if you break a needle, you definitely have a burr SOMEWHERE that you should find and file away before continuing quilting, but I can imagine if the needle broke during someone's rental session why they would want to keep quilting if they weren't experiencing any problems with thread breaking or anything.
• The hopping foot not being perfectly level, which can contribute to some of the directional tension needle flex issues I've been having
• Last but not least, my tension assembly was not working correctly before and it is SO MUCH better now!  Something was jammed in too far and pinching the takeup spring before, so that no matter how much I loosened the tension dial on my machine, the upper tension did not loosen at all.  Even when I loosened the tension dial to the point that the discs weren't even touching, I still felt a heavy drag on my thread when I pulled it through the eye of the needle and my stitch samples still looked like my upper tension was too tight.  I thought I was going crazy that I couldn't get good stitches for any other thread but Glide, but my tension assembly was stuck at the right tension for Glide and it was like it wasn't adjustable at all.

After doing all of that, I played with So Fine thread and made sure I could get a pretty, balanced stitch with that, and then I threaded up the machine with some King Tut variegated cotton thread.  I am a MUCH happier camper now as far as tension is concerned!

APQS Tension Assembly

We did place a parts order for Millie.  She's getting a new encoder wheel -- encoder wheels are kind of like the hooks on your bra band.  They should fit snug on the loosest setting when you first get them so that as they stretch out (bras) or wear down (encoder wheels), you have a couple of adjustments you can make to get them snug again before you need to replace them.  Angie from APQS also suggested flipping my carriage wheels (rather than replacing them just yet) -- that's like rotating the tires on your car.  We'll do that when we change out the encoder wheel.  But I also ordered a few other goodies that I'm excited about:

Texas Hold'Em Bracket: A Place Holder for the Quilt Top Roller, So the Hand Brake Still Functions

• I'm getting a Texas Hold 'Em bracket, so I can take the quilt roller off my machine and get it out of my way without impairing the functioning of my hand brake
• I ordered a new tension assembly, even though the old one is working better now than it did before.  It's a $22 part, and tension is a really big deal on a quilting machine -- I want my stitches to look as good as they possibly can
• And, while I'm at it, I ordered the parts I need to convert my Millennium from the smaller L "Smart Bobbin" to the larger M bobbin.  Woo-hoo!  

"Smart" L Hook and Bobbin Case Top, Larger M Hook and Bobbin Case Bottom

M Bobbins and Prewounds on Left, L Bobbins and Prewounds on Right

My parts should be here by end of day tomorrow, but we won't get a chance to do anything with them until Sunday after church.  My kids are in a production of The Sound of Music at our church with performances Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, and one of my sisters is in town this weekend, too.  But I'm looking forward to getting reacquainted with my newly-rejuvenated longarm machine next week!

Pernicious Puckers and Detestable Thread Loopies: Trouble-Shooting in Machine Embroidery

Okay, so remember the Big, Bodacious Birdie that I spent the better part of two days embroidering for the Machine Embroidery Blog Hop a couple of weeks ago?  I promised I would do a follow up about some of my trouble-shooting, and here it is.

I really need to do a huge disclaimer here first to let you all know that I am NOT a very experienced machine embroiderer.  I have embroidered monogrammed gifts here and there, a quilt label or two, and a couple of Bob the Builder designs on tiny little sweatshirts, and I have done some outline quilting with my embroidery module, but that's about it.  Now that I've invested in a new machine with superior embroidery capabilities and a great, big Jumbo Hoop to go with it, I'm determined to do more embroidery than I did in the past, and I'm hell-bent on solving the most irksome problems that have plagued my machine embroidery projects from the very beginning: Pernicious Puckering and DetestableThread Loopies of Doom!

Puckering with Organ Titanium 80/12BP Embroidery Needle

So, for the ME Blog Hop, I tried to follow the Anita Goodesign directions to the letter, but the directions were specifically written for the applique block designs and I was embroidering an individual, NON-applique motif that I had enlarged by about 10-12% in my Bernina embroidery software.  I noticed some puckering around the fill stitching with the very first thread color, but I didn't stop and start over because I honestly didn't know what to change and I had to get the design stitched out and the post written up for my blog hop deadline.  I decided to use this as a learning opportunity, knowing that I could use the finished design for free-motion quilting practice if it turned out really awful and unusable.  So I stitched away...

I take a scientific approach to these kinds of problems.  Step one was the research phase, where I read several books on machine embroidery and compared advice from different authors.  (See my book reviews here).  As soon as I noticed that my birdie design was puckering, I got the books out again and started hunting through them for ideas.  I had learned that puckering is usually a symptom of stretching the fabric when you're hooping it, but that puckering can also be caused by insufficient stabilizing or by using a ball point needle when a sharp needle would have been more appropriate for your fabric.  Since my silk fabric had been interfaced with Pellon Ultra Weft, then spray-basted with 505 to a piece of muslin that was spray-basted to a piece of midweight tearaway embroidery stabilizer, I thought for sure I had the stabilizing part of the equation under control.  With all four layers sandwiched together and then starched, it felt like I was hooping a piece of card stock instead of fabric. 

 

The first color in this design was a dense fill stitch for the top bird, but most of the subsequent colors were satin stitched elements, and lordy, how the Loopies of Doom reared their ugly heads! 

Behold, the Detestable Thread Loopies of Doom!

I knew I could fix these ugly upper thread loops after the design was finished (I'll show you how later in the post), but there were SO many of them and honestly, I knew I must be doing something wrong and I was determined to figure out what it was.  These upper thread loops have plagued my embroidery projects from the very beginning, when I tried just cutting them off (bad idea -- it makes your whole design unravel!).  My preliminary internet research revealed that many people think this problem is just inherent to domestic embroidery machines, or that it's more of a problem with certain machine brands than others. Not so! These upper thread loops, which are most common with satin stitches, indicate that there is an issue with the upper thread misbehaving as your needle passes down into your fabric to form a stitch. Our variables are the needle, the thread, and the fabric.  So I experimented with changing one variable at a time, taking notes about what I had tried and what results I noticed, before changing a different variable.  The first suspect is the needle, so I started changing them out after each color change and taking notes on what I had tried so far and what results I was getting. 

 

H80/12TBP = 80/12 Titanium BALL POINT!

I had started out with one of what I thought was the best embroidery needles in my drawer, an 80/12 Organ Titanium Coated Embroidery Needle.  Titanium coated needles last 5-7x as long as chrome plated needles, so they are worth the higher price point.  But what did this give me?  Thread loopies!  I put in a new needle of the same type, brand and size, in case the first needle had a burr or defect.  Still thread loopies.  That was when I noticed that my package said BALLPOINT embroidery needles.  One of my books had explained that most of the flat shank embroidery needles sold for domestic (non-commercial) embroidery machines had a ballpoint tip, whereas the round shank embroidery needles for commercial machines came in a much greater variety to suit a wider range of fabrics. 

90/14 SHARP Embroidery Needles

Aha!  I dug around in my drawer (it helps to have a stockpile of lots of different needles) and tried a size 90/14 Organ Sharp Embroidery Needle.  Guess what?  Once I had switched from a ballpoint needle to a sharp point needle, I saw no more puckering with this design, even when the second bird stitched out with the same dense fill stitch that caused puckering right out of the gate.  I still was seeing thread loopies, but fewer than before. 

I consulted my book again, the one about embroidering on "difficult materials," and saw that the author recommended using a MICROTEX needle instead of an embroidery needle when embroidering a densely woven silk fabric like mine.  More digging in the needle drawer yielded a pack of 70/10 Schmetz Microtex needles.  DISASTER!  Uber thread loops!  Eek!  The size 70 needle made a hole that was much too small for the 40 weight Isacord embroidery thread to pass through smoothly. 

The Winner!!!

Finally, I put in a larger 90/14 Schmetz Microtex Needle, and my thread loopies were almost completely eliminated.  If you think about it, this makes sense.  Microtex needles are designed with a very slim, acute point, for precise stitching through densely woven microfibre, silk (like my silk shantung!), satins, and artificial leather, and the larger 90/14 size was better suited to my thread.

I said that the 90/14 Microtex needle ALMOST eliminated all of the thread loopies.  I eventually figured out that the remaining loops resulted from the way the slippery embroidery thread was falling off the spool too rapidly, reducing the tension on the upper thread even though it was properly threaded through the tension disks.  I had started out with my embroidery thread on the horizontal spool pin, then tried it on the machine's vertical spool pin (I didn't like how the larger embroidery spool wobbled around there) and finally put it on a free-standing cone thread stand next to my machine to facilitate speedy color changes (this was before I got the adapter to attach my Multiple Spool Holder to my new 750 QE machine).  I was using the thread net thingy with the first couple of colors on the horizontal spool holder to keep the thread from unwinding too fast and getting caught, but I stopped using the net when I went vertical with the thread because it was slowing down my color changes, I was lazy, and didn't believe the thread net was doing anything anyway.  Wrong! 

No Thread Net

See how slack the red embroidery thread is in the photo above, how it drapes between thread guides on its way to the tension disks?  Somewhere I read that these ugly thread loopies can be caused by upper thread tension that is too loose, but I couldn't believe that the default embroidery tension on my fancy-schmancy new machine would need to be adjusted for plain old Isacord thread. 

Thread Net to the Rescue!

Noticing the slack in my embroidery thread as it fed to the machine, I decided to try putting the silly little net thing on the thread (it reminds me of the hair nets worn by lunch ladies in school cafeterias).  Believe it or not, this silly little fishnet stocking thing immediately corrected the upper thread tension, eliminating the remaining thread loops.  Who knew?!

This is how the thread looks at the back of the machine when I have a thread net on the spool:



Thread Delivery is Taut When Using Thread Net on Embroidery Spool

See how nice and taut it is, with no loose slack between the thread guides?  So finally, after 3+ hours of embroidery, testing out four different kinds of needles and several different setups for upper thread delivery, I finally figured out that Microtex 90/14 needle + Thread Net = No Puckering or Thread Loops on Silk Shantung!

 

Here's that finished design again, still in the hoop.  You can see the initial puckering and horizontal wrinkling that I had with the first ballpoint embroidery needle around the body and tail of the top bird.  All of my thread loopies are still in the design at this point as well.

 

Remember that ugly thread loopy photo I showed you at the beginning of this post?  Here it is again:

 

And here is that same portion of the embroidery design, after I pulled the thread loops to the back of the design with a simple sweater pull repair tool that cost less than $2:

Thread Loopies Gone!

 

Essential Embroidery Tools: Hemostat, Curved Scissors, and Snag Repair Tool for Thread Loopies

These are the three most important embroidery tools that did NOT come with your machine.  The curved scissors at the top of this photo is perfect for trimming jump stitches while your design is stitching out.  The snag repair tool at right gets inserted into your completed embroidery design from the right side, right next to a thread loop.  You simply twist the tool slightly as you pull it through the embroidery design, and it catches the thread loop and pulls it to the back side of your work. 

 

So, what's the other tool in that photo, at bottom left?  It's a hemostat.  It looks like a scissor/tweezers but it has serrated edges that tightly grip as little as a single slippery embroidery thread when the handles lock together. 

 

Because I hate to waste bobbin thread, I keep sewing until my bobbin completely runs out, and I end up with 5-7 satin stitches of white bobbin thread on the top of my design that I have to remove before I can back the machine up and continue embroidering my design.  I use my curved scissors to clip through the center of those satin stitches from the right side of my design (without severing the top embroidery thread), still in the hoop, and then I can grab one side of the clipped satin stitches with my hemostat tool and pull them all out with one tug.  Easy-peasy!  Then I just back the machine up those few stitches and continue embroidering the design. 

 

Lest you think that I have finally solved all of the mysteries of machine embroidery, let me show you what happened when I unhooped this design:

 

This excess fabric and puffiness in between embroidered areas is a different kind of puckering from what was happening with the ballpoint needle around the top bird.  I think the slippery silk fabric slipped loose at the edges of my hoop, and I think this because my "embroidering difficult fabrics" book advised wrapping the inner hoop with self-adhesive VetRap to prevent this problem with silks. 

 

Remember how I said that I tried to follow the Anita Goodesign instructions as much as possible, but their directions were for an applique block?  They were having you hoop only your muslin and stabilizer, and then overlay your silk fabrics as applique pieces that would be secured individually as part of the embroidered applique process, so their silk wasn't in the hoop at all.  Although I had four layers sandwiched together for this design, I noticed upon completion that the Pellon Ultra Weft interfacing was pulling away from the silk in places and that the 505 spray had not prevented my silk fabric from separating and moving away from the muslin and tearaway stabilizer that it was hooped with.

 

Since I had spent over four hours stitching out this design, I tried to "fix" this problem by ironing the completed design from the back side, face down over a terry cloth towel, as I have heard many people recommend.  Hmmm...

 

After Ironing!!!  :-(

I am NEVER GOING TO DO THIS, EVER AGAIN!!!!  Surely you heard my lunatic screaming reverberating around the planet?  Apparently, I don't know how to iron, either!  Soon after this picture was taken, my darling husband spilled COFFEE on this design, too.  So this stitch out is destined for free-motion quilting practice after all.  It will be interesting to see whether I can quilt out all that excess waviness in the design with close echoing or pebbling or something, and I can practice other designs around the embroidery.  But I have NOT given up on this.

 

I'm going to try this design again, using the 90/14 Microtex needle, but next time I'm going to:

• Wrap my inner hoop with self-adhesive bandage tape to better grip the slippery silk
• Engage my machine's basting function to secure all layers around the hoop's perimeter prior to stitching the design
• Try a different fusible interfacing for my silk fabric.  I brought home two different options from Sew Much Fun the other day, products specifically designed to support dense embroidery designs on lightweight fabrics without changing the hand of the fabric

I'll let you know how that works out!

 

UPDATED 6/17/2013:  I was able to save this project with free-motion quilting!  You can read about that in this post.