Help - what causes the tiny wrinkles, ripples

[Smweinbeck]

Another plea from a struggling newbie!  I am posting  a picture showing the tiny ripples that appear all around my practice stitching. I have spent a lot of time since getting the machine learning about tension and thought I had it right, until I stitched these couple lines. Tried tweaking that but still getting ripples. It seems like taut fabric could result in wrinkles, but I don’t feel the fabric is  stretched that tightly. Please let me know if you have any ideas after looking at the picture below! I have so appreciated the helpful comments I’ve received on a couple other Issues I’ve had to post about. Thanks in advance.

[mamu]

I think it might be the fabric choice and not your machine, also batting can make this happen.  Looks pretty normal to me... I really don't see a problem.

[Smweinbeck]

Oh, that’s good to hear! Since it was for practice,  I was just using muslin. I can see where that might explain these ripples. I will test it out on regular fabric before diving in to do my first actual quilt on my Lenin.

 I was glad to hear you say it looked normal… I sometimes wonder if I am looking for problems where none exist, partly b cause I’m not exactly sure what good  stitching should look like. 

[Katydids]

Your tension looks pretty good, that rippling just seems to be from where the stitch is pulling the fabric down.  The best way to tell if your tension is good is on points and curves.  Straight lines don't give you a good representation of tension issues.  In the points and curves you will see if tension is off by thread being pulled up or down and poking through, or the thread laying flat either top or bottom.  Hope that makes sense.

[Smweinbeck]

Yes, it makes sense. I find the whole tension thing tricky - I never really had to think about it with my domestic machine! But I’m learning!

Thanks for the help!