Nancy is having surgury...

lol...

Nancy's dress - made by Jules of Relish Australia

So have you noticed that I haven't been free motion quilting anything recently? My main machine, Nancy, has not been working properly. She's got some crazy tension issues (where the bobbing thread gets all loopy on the bottom, and the top thread just pulls right through). I had tried everything (even adjusting the bobbin tension - which I then adjusted back to normal when it didn't fix the problem). 

Finally Saturday I got her in to the repair shop at Vogue in Evanston. Jim took a look at it (that guy is awesome) and fiddled around with it. He couldn't fix it on the spot - he said it might be that the tension dials aren't catching (meaning he has to take it all apart and fix it).... or it may be related to a small small nick in the bobbin casing... but he put some clear nail polish over that to smooth it over, and it didn't make it even remotely better. He's figuring it's probably not the bobbin casing. 

So what does all this mean? No FMQing. Since I don't have a feed dog cover for my old White (Betty). 

Also it means that I may be shopping for a new machine (at some date which I have some money to spare). I told Jim to call me if the total cost is going to be more than $50 (labor included)... since I'm not sure I want to put more than that into fixing a machine that I spent about $200 on... two years ago and about a dozen quilts ago. I'd have to think about it and discus whether Jim thinks any other issues will arise in the future. 

PS he explained why Nancy seized up a while back too - not enough lubrication in the hand wheel crank thingy (which requires taking the whole casing off to lubricate -- so not really easily fixable. But he said with some time of rest periodically (after quilting for you know ... hours and hours) it will loosen back up again. It wasn't a result of the thread I was using like the other guy said! :) I was right to not believe him.