No recess

As I work on cultivating some quilting skills, I've started practicing free-motion quilting. And kinda like in the great song from that famous band's better, first album, it's like I'm in school again. But not high school, more like kindergarten. Trying to develop a steady, graceful hand for directing even my tiny test sandwiches has been humbling. Kinda like when a few weeks ago I thought it would be good to practice writing with my left hand in case I ever lost the use of my right one, I was surprised at just how bad the results were.

To make matters worse, the machine was making a different noise than I was used to and it didn't sound right. I checked everything that made sense to me to check. Then I checked the manual. Noisy machine indicates trapped thread in hook thing or lint build up in bobbin thing. So I removed the plate and found this:

And I thought I was doing a good job keeping her clean!

After a thorough brushing and vacuuming I reassembled her and tried again. Better, but still sounded a little off. Oh lovely interwebs, again with the win, I found this thread on Flickr of all places. Turns out my machine is a thread snob. Nice. Lesson learned.

Now I can get back to penmanship lessons. Wish us luck, things are not looking good...