I had one of those days in the sewing room lately. 

I was quilting for the better part of an hour before finishing the section I was working on and pulled it out to inspect my work. 

Gorgeous on the top, I was actually proud of how it came out! 

Then I turned it over and saw it. 

The entire section, COVERED in massive eye lashes in the quilting. 

All I could do is sit there and contemplate what would happen if I left it, knowing I was about to spend a lot of time ripping it all out. 

It was like 1/4 of my quilt. I thought about crying and then went and grabbed a glass of wine instead.

I just set it down, rather aggressively because I felt it deserved to get punished, and left it for a week or two to let my anger cool off before tackling the tedious job of ripping it all out. 

After thinking it through though, I decided it makes a great opportunity to talk about eye lashes in quilting, why it happens, how to fix it, and how to avoid it in the future. 

So the next time this annoying quilting problem pops up, you’ll be ready to handle it the second you see it. 

What are eye lashes in quilting?

No they aren’t real eye lashes, they just look like them 🙂 

Going back to sewing machine basics quickly, eyelashes occur when there is an imbalance between the two threads of your sewing machine – the top thread and your bobbin thread.

You can get all the full details about how a sewing machine actually makes a stitch in our post here, but the long and short of it is that one thread gets wrapped around the other twisting them around the fabric and locking in a stitch. 

When the slack between the two threads varies too much, the location where that crossing of the threads occurs can end up showing on one of the surfaces of the quilt. 

More often than not, you’ll see them on the underside of the quilt, the bobbin thread will pull the slack of the top thread through to the bottom and hold it tight so it looks like little eyelashes. 

What causes eye lashing?

Good news, there is only one cause for eye lashes in quilting – a tension problem with your thread.

Bad news, there are a few different ways to cause tension problems as you are quilting. Figuring out which scenario you are falling into is the key to fixing it!

Your sewing machine is usually very good at managing the tension of both your bobbin thread and your top thread, but sometimes things can happen that your sewing machine isn’t expecting causing eye lashes.

Unfortunately there aren’t any good ways to fix eye lashing that’s already occurred. If its only minor eye lashing, you can definitely take your chances and leave the stitching in, however if you ended up with eyelashes like mine, there’s just no saving it. 

All it takes is one rogue cat claw, or even human nail to catch the unsecured threads and rip them. 

Trust me I know it hurts, but ripping it out and redoing it the work is the most reliable way to fix the problem so your quilt doesn’t suffer later. 

However, there are ways to fix your sewing machine so you don’t spend all that time ripping out stitches just to put eyelashes in a second time. 

So I’ve gathered a list of the most common reasons you are encountering eye lashing and how to fix the problem as quick as possible and move on with your project. 

7 Reasons Why Your Are Getting Eye Lashes In Quilting

The thread slipped out of a guide on the machine

I did a project recently for Suzy Quilts that used invisible thread and MAN that stuff is slippery! 

It was constantly popping out of my take-up lever or jumping up and actually looping around the guide basically making a knot around the metal.

It was essentially stopping the top thread from being able to be grabbed and moved along by the machine. 

My top thread ended up being too tight (because of the knot stopping it from passing through the guides) and pull the bobbin thread to the top causing eye lashing in the quilting. 

The Fix: 

Rethread the machine and start again

You are using two different threads between your top thread and bobbin

This is a common thing to do when your backing and your quilt top are very different colors. 

You can match your bobbin to your backing and then match the top thread to the quilt top to minimize contrast of the colors on either side. 

If you aren’t careful though, you may choose threads that are slightly different weights, brands, whatever it might be, that run through your machine differently. 

If one thread is a higher weight than the other you will almost immediately see eye lashing. 

The sewing machine is expecting the top thread to be the tension of both sides so when the bobbin thread is a higher weight thread, it won’t hold as securely and end up pull through to the top.

The Fix:

Loosen the tension of the top thread and restart.

You’ve left adjusted tension setting from a different project

Depending on how thick a project is, you may different tension adjustments. 

A quilt sandwich is going to be much tighter on your stitches compared to just sewing a quilt block together. 

It may just be your tension settings from your previous project don’t mesh well with your current one and need to be adjusted slightly. 

The Fix: 

Do some test stitching on the excess batting and backing around the edges to test tension settings until you get it dialed in. 

This test needs to be done on something of the same thickness to get right so the excess batting areas around the outside of your quilt are the ideal location. 

You are moving the quilt too quickly around curves

If you are only seeing eye lashing around curves and no where else in the quilting, it’s likely that you are moving the quilt too fast through the machine to the point where it can’t keep up. 

For some of our best hacks on practicing free motion quilting be sure to check out our posts below! 

7 Hacks for Better FMQ
FMQ – How to get started, and how to master it fast
7 FMQ Myths keeping you from getting started

The Fix: 

You can double check your tension setting just to be sure, but more often than not, slowing down around those curves will help solve the problem as well.

You forgot to put down your presser foot

It’s okay, it happens to the best of us. 

If you forget to put your presser foot down and start to sew, there is nothing keeping your quilt sandwich from sliding around in every direction. 

The tension between your quilt sandwich and the threads are going to be wild so eye lashing in the quilting is bound to occur. 

The Fix:

Put down your presser foot

You are using old thread

When thread gets old it tends to get brittle, and depending on how it was stored, you may have outer layers of the thread that were exposed to more sunlight than the under layers. 

This will mean that when you go to wind you bobbin, you’ll be filling it with the brittle version of the thread. 

And when you go to load it in your top thread afterward, you’ll have stripped away the brittle areas of the thread in your bobbin leaving a softer more pliable thread that didn’t get as much sun exposure. 

This could leave you with differences in flexibility of your thread and tension issues between the two causing eye lashing on the bottom where the stiffer thread is. 

You may also be experiencing a lot of phantom thread breaking in this scenario too. Where your thread breaks but there is no obvious reason why. 

The Fix: 

Toss the old thread out and start fresh with a new spool. 

Your bobbin may be wound inconsistently

More times than I can count I’ve wound my bobbin too tight or too loose causing eye lashing in quilting. 

The tension guide to wind your bobbin exists for a reason, but if something restricts your spool or the thread just doesn’t get wrapped well before you let go of the bobbin, you could end up with wonky tensions throughout that entire bobbin. 

While most times this will only happen toward the end of your bobbin when there is nothing holding the end to the bobbin, it is possible the entire bobbin could be affected. 

The Fix:

You may be able to adjust the tension on the top to account for the inconsistency of the bobbin, however there may be cases where you simply need to pull the thread off the bobbin and start over. 

Dealing with Eye lashing in Quilting

Turning your quilt over to find eye lashes in quilting can be super discouraging and frustrating. You spent all this time putting the stitches in and now you have to spend 5 times as long just to undo it. 

My own issue I mentioned at the beginning of the post was a result of leaving tension settings from a previous project. I was working with a much thinner invisible thread on the last project and changed to a typical 40wt thread. 

The machine was NOT having it. 

In any case, most of these issues can be prevented by taking a minute or two to test your stitches before starting on the real thing. 

You can iron out those tension issues before any seam ripping has to occur and avoid the heartbreak. 

Hopefully this post helps and you’ll be better at remembering to test your stitches than me. 

If you liked this post and want more quilting tips, be sure to follow my little blog here and we’ll keep you updated on all the best things going on here at Quilting Wemple.