The feathers have been flying!

I've been stitching feathers on my  quilt for the last 2 days and yesterday, I finished the last one! Yea! I really enjoyed doing them and I definitely will be practicing more advanced ways to stitch them, and "fancier" ones too.  After I stitched the last feather, I began the design on the flying geese--a simple triple loop in the center of each one. But with the first one, I began getting huge skipped stitches and thread breakage.  So, I ripped out the 2 geese I'd done and decided to stitch in the ditch around each goose.

While I was doing that, I decided on doing a  spiral in each of the background triangles of the geese and leave the centers to "pop" out.  I got about a dozen spirals done--they looked really nice, btw--and again with the skipping and breakage! That's when the verbal feathers began flying!

I called the store where I'd bought the new, expensive, all computerized machine and all I got was, "Change the needle and clean out the thread uptake area and bobbin area.  I can't really help you without seeing what the problem is."  Grrrrr!  I shut everything down and will do the cleaning and give it another try this morning if I have time.

Here's the deal:  I had no problem when I did hours and hours of free motion feather stitching. When I finished that, I put in a new spool of thread, same company and same weight but different color, and kept the same bobbin thread.  No problem with stitching straight lines with the walking foot. But now, with the free motion stitching loops and spirals, the problem starts.  It seems that the thread is shredding somewhere in the thread uptake area.  I see a lump of thread above the needle eye that gets too large to pass through the needle.  I put in a new needle when I began the quilting--a #80 top stitching needle which has a larger eye than other needles.  What could be causing the shredding?  I'd be happy to hear from anyone who might be able to advise me on this.

In the meantime, I'll clean out the thread uptake area really good--I have a little vacuum I can use in there as well as manual cleaning--and try it again. Wish me luck!

By the way, this quilt is really looking good!  If only I could finish the quilting!