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Quilting Applique Tutorial

Brother 6000i Sewing Machine- Making Zig Zag stitches?

ok..I just bought a Brother 6000i sewing machine so I could make a quilt and other baby items for my newborn…

Don’t do anything to the threading yet… sew some straight stitches on a scrap of fabric and compare it to the photos at: http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/22521551 The first two are front and back sides of what good stitching looks like — blue thread on top, red in the bobbin. The next two are what happens if you don’t get the thread in the bobbin tension, and the following 4 are what happens if there’s no top tension (because you threaded with the presser foot down or are trying to sew with the presser foot up), and if you don’t start seams correctly.

If your sewing looks like a zigzag version of photos 5&6, try rethreading the top of the machine, making sure the presser foot is raised. The presser foot has to be up when threading so the tension disks open and your thread can actually get into the tension. The foot has to be down when sewing so the thread is enclosed in the tension disks and has tension. If you’ve messed with the upper tension, set it back to 4 (normal range for most fabrics, most stitches 3-5) and try again.

If you have too much top tension (perhaps there’s an extra wrap of thread around a guide or it’s accidentally wrapped around the spool pin or you accidentally turned the top tension to 10), your zigzags may look like fairly straight stitch on top, but zigzag underneath. If that’s the case, set the top tension to 4 and rethread again *after taking the spool of thread completely off the machine, including off the spool pin.
Follow each step in the manual carefully — when you’re a newbie it often helps to read each step out loud before you do it.

If this doesn’t do it for you, drop me a note and we can troubleshoot this some more.

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