I got an embroidery machine – found an amazing deal because it was a “holiday” bundle with CDs of Christmas designs. It’s basically the November 1st Halloween candy of embroidery machines. As most machines do, it came with a sample from quality control testing the machine. It works. Except I could not get the thing to work! The bobbin thread was used *all* of the top pattern. The top thread was barely used. Everything I found online said you threaded it wrong. Don’t muck with tension settings, you absolutely threaded it wrong.

I couldn’t tell 100% that I didn’t thread it wrong. At the pretension section, there’s a tab that I had the thread “pinched” into — maybe that was wrong (although not pinching the thread in there and having it on the left hand side didn’t work any better). I spent hours yesterday re-threading the machine. I re-threaded it again and again today. I finally found a video on YouTube of someone who provided detailed instructions on what threaded right means. Turns out I was threading it right.

So, even though all of the advice online is to not touch the tension and just thread it right, I decided to adjust the tension. Can always move it back. It’s a digital control. I can return it to ‘4’ readily enough. Voila – my machine actually embroiders.