by Rita Freer
Because I travel to events with my machine, I have the machine in a trailer. When the weather gets warm, I cannot use paper sided bobbins since they seem to swell with the humidity. Recently, while using a plastic sided bobbin, the machine stopped stitching and broke the needle. I saw the bobbin was a mess and after replacing the needle, I inserted a new bobbin. Now the machine would not form stitches and kept breaking needles. .
I decided to check the lower end of the machine and oil it . I couldn’t find anything wrong until I attempted to insert another bobbin. Then I realized it did not snap in place. Upon further investigation, I found one side had come off the bobbin and was still stuck in the bobbin case. Upon removal, the machine sewed fine. In four years of embroidery. this has never happened before; but I will be aware it’s possible now. On a commercial machine, a service call can be quite expensive. I will always check the bobbin case before inserting a new one.
Yes I have seen this before .
I have a Brother PE series machine and the plastic bobbins regularly split on me .
The reason being that the machine winds the thread too tightly when the bobbin is refilled .
I have a janome and I have had bobbins split one side off, I thought it was a faulty bobbin but it is the way the bobbin wound.
I have an old pedal sewing machine that has broken bobbins. I thought maybe it was because the bobbins were old and had dried out or something was why they were breaking. Maybe not, I will certainly double check. I still use the machine, but for buttonholes only. Yes, it is so much easier to use my electric machine, but those buttonholes are not as pretty.