Down leakage from tiny holes in quilt shell?

[Brandon Guy]

I'm working on a karo quilt and have one concern so far. When I sew in reverse to lock the stitch it seems to pull a tiny little hole in the fabric. Not sure if that makes sense or if anybody else has experienced anything like it. So, I'm winding up with a little hole in each end of every baffle. It's not huge, but I can see light through it and I'm worried that down will leak through it.
So I have two questions before I continue.
1. What can I do to eliminate the holes? Reduce tension? Use smaller thread (I'm using gutterman diygearsupply stuff)?
2. The bigger question, what can I do to seal the holes already made? I was thinking making some sort of silicone mixture similar to a seam sealer or buying the flowable silicone stuff. Any better ideas?

[Jeremy Osburn]

Nylon is woven so the individual threads will close up around the existing holes so don't worry about that. A little bit of down leakage seems to be par for the course on projects. Think about it this way, there are thousands of individual "downs" in each ounce, if you lose a few in each use, you still will never run out. As far as prevention, lowering your tension might work. I am still learning how to make minor adjustments to thread tension on these light weight fabrics so I can't be much help there. I will say that I have found that the slower I go when I am doing the lock stitch at the beginning and end the cleaner it looks, which to me would seem to mean that less holes would exist.

The questions to answer is how are you feeding the fabric as you sew?

What size needle are you using?

[Ken Thompson]

Try running the machine manually for those last few stitches. I get good results using the handwheel on thinner fabrics.

[Roger Caffin]

> When I sew in reverse to lock the stitch it seems to pull a tiny little hole in the fabric.

Your tension may be a little high for the fabric.
But rather than reverse the sewing at the end, just stop and tie a knot. Well, that's what I do, anyhow.

Gutterman thread – rather coarse and cheap, consumer grade. OK for clothing using heavier fabrics. For UL gear (silnylon etc) I use Amman Rasant 120 on the light fabrics. Pro grade.

Cheers

[Javan Dempsey]

This is likely a tension issue, I'd try loosening both your upper and lower tension and see if that helps. If you're experiencing any "puckering" along the stitch lines, or notice your shell losing width, that's probably the cause, even if your stitching is evenly locking the top and bottom threads.

Otherwise, my experience has shown me that some machines simply don't do reverse stitching very well. This is often true of commercial machines. Another option, which was ubiquitous before industrial straight stitchers all started including reverse, is to lift your presser foot with the needle in the work, and spin it around 180deg, and stitch forward, back along the same line.

Gutterman thread like every big business, has various grades and styles. They've got some great thread, but the standard retail poly thread is a little course as mentioned. I much prefer Mettler Metrosene Plus for home machines. Although it's not available in very large spools, or cones at all.

[Ryan Smith]

+1 on Mettler Metrosene. Also have some Superior thread that has done well for me.

Ryan

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