What Went Wrong?

Have you ever had a time when you were working on something and all of a sudden everything becomes a challenge.  How is this possible when just a moment ago things were fine?

Quilting can be like that. For example, I was quilting rays of beautiful bronze metallic thread and fill against a burgundy background and everything was going smoothly.  Then the thread began to break.  And break.  And break again!  Now I know metallic thread can be a little finicky, but it was working fine a moment ago.  What happened?  So, I check all the obvious stress points.  Threaded correctly.  Tension is good.  Take out the bobbin and reset.  Check for dust and lodged threads. Change needles. Change needles again. Stop for the day.  Ok, I've gone too far to rip it all out and I'm not far enough to make it work without the thread breaking.  Start again the next day.  I worked on a different section for a bit with different thread and everything worked fine.  Back to the metallic and the thread was breaking again!  Go through most steps again but this time I put in a new bobbin.  Better, but not good.  I spooled off some of the bobbin thread and presto, it's PERFECT!  Whew!  It was the bobbin all along.  Anytime I've had thread breakage it has been an issue with the bobbin.  In this case the thread had not wound evenly near the bottom and was not spooling off smoothly, causing the bobbin thread to catch and break the weaker metallic thread.

Life can be like this.  When we run into challenges, often we go through our check list, starting with the easiest things first.  But when the issue isn't resolved we need to dig deeper to the root cause.  It can often be something at our core that isn't right.  And no matter what we change at the surface, if we don't address the core issue the challenge persists.  So if the "thread keeps breaking" in your life, it's good to check the core issue early.