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Needle making runs in the backing fabric?


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Has anyone had pulls or runs like a stocking run in their backing fabric when longarm quilting. I have a customer who put in a new bobbin case, bobbins, GrosBeckert needles ordered from APQS and is still having issues. I thought it has to be the needle or cheap coarse backing fabric. Some of the batting is poking through. She is using the same So Fine thread and the same batting she has always used. She has changed needles from the same pack and is still having this issue. The machine sews but it's making the fabric run. Could it be a bad batch of needles?

Any suggestions?

JoAnn

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Bad fabric? She should try a test stitch-out on the side using different fabrics and the same batting to see if she gets the same results. Make sure her fabrics are good quality. It's possible she has a bad pack of needles, but it would take a big burr or defect on the point to cause the fabric to run. :unsure:

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Hi JoAnn, I may have talked to your customer today...was it Judy?

Anyway, to educate others who may encounter this problem, the fabric Judy's customer provided is dark burgundy on one side, and nearly white on the wrong side. She's using 80/20 batting. Some fabrics are notorious for causing this "running", including Moda, some less expensive fabrics, and fabrics that have been surface dyed instead of yarn dyed. You can sometimes spot them by the high contrast of color between the back of the fabric and the right side.

What's actually happening is the needle is "rolling" the individual threads of the backing fabric as it enters from "wrong side to right side", exposing the back side of the individual fabric threads (the white side) on the back of the quilt. It can look like a "run" because the thread rolls or twists where the needle penetrated it, extending it farther out from the needle hole until the fabric thread recovers. You can tell if this is the problem by scraping your fingernail perpendicular to the run. If you can "roll" the fabric threads back over (making the run disappear or reduce its appearance) then this is the problem. Sometimes the needle will not slip between each individual thread in the fabric, but it will catch or pierce the thread. In this case, you won't get the hole to disappear or recover.

To minimize the problem, a smaller needle may help, along with a very clean batting that doesn't have slubs or bumps (which aggravate the problem). Unfortunately sometimes the best solution is simply not to use that particular fabric at all.

I advised Judy to substitute a small piece of a different fabric under the quilt (unpinning just a small section of the customer's backing and pinning a new piece in place) to see if the problem persisted. Unfortunately the customer did not give her more than 1-1/2 inches of extra backing on the quilt. If she sees no issues with the substitute backing fabric segment, she knows it's the backing. I suggested she contact the customer and explain the problem, and ask the customer to provide a different fabric.

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I did a dino quilt for my grandson and one (not all) of the fabrics in the quilt kit did this same thing! I decided not to fix it since he would probably only use it for a year or so. I did take a black marker and fix a few obvious places :-) but the fabric did have the dye on one side like Dawn described. Thanks for the great explanation! I appreciate it!

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