Keep a small “throw away†quilt sandwich by your machine at all times and use this sandwich to check your tension every time that you change either your top thread or your bobbin thread. In this way, you avoid having to tear out your stitches on the quilt you care about because the tension is not balanced.
When you sit down to learn a new quilt design, practice on a small sandwich, (i.e. 9 in x 12 in). This is small enough that you won’t need to put any effort into wrestling with a large bulky sandwich, and you can put all your effort into learning to stitch the new motif. On top of that, once you’ve finished the stitching, you can trim it down to 8 x 11 and keep your sandwiches in a notebook to remember all your great motif ideas for the future!
