brcollector

Hello,
Trying to finish a military quilt for my Dad by Friday and my Prostitcher Lite will stitch a couple of stitches and then ghost stitch. I'm in contact with support but need a quicker answer!! Any ideas or suggestions? I've been working on this for 8 hours and can't find the solution. I finished a quilt last week with no issues. I can stitch a single design but as soon as I add repeats it won't work.

Any suggestions I haven't tried already? Thanks!!

quiltsfor

Sorry, no idea about a Prostitcher Lite, have you tried doing a search on youtube. There are several postings and videos.

Check this one out: Handi Quilter Pro-stitcher issues

dunster

What do you mean by ghost stitching?

Peckish

I'm also unfamiliar with the term "ghost stitching". Do you mean it's skipping stitches?
When you say you've contacted "support", does that mean your dealer or the manufacturer? And have you tried the vice versa?
Maybe check FB, there are a lot of groups for the various setups, machines, and software there. I have an Innova and there are several very active and helpful groups there.

Macybaby

Mine started doing this - and it got worse and stopped stitching all together. Finally after DH tired all the troubleshooting with online support, (everything tested out OK) it had to go to in for service. As soon as the repair guy opened the case, a screw fell out. Turns out the screws that held the flywheel to the machine got loose, so even though everything was working fine electronically, the needle wasn't going up and down with everything else. Sort of like with vintage machines where you can loosen the flywheel so you can wind a bobbin without having the needle go up and down as you do it.

Prostitcher has the ability to "trace" a design where it will move the machine but not actually stitch. I use the opti-stitch to slow down at the start of rows, and often I accidentally hit the wrong spot and it switches screens on me and I accidentally shut off the "stitch" setting. (this is because I didn't want to hit pause first, and was aiming for a moving target on the screen) It will keep stitching until the machine stops, and then ghost stitch on the next start up. At least after I time or two I figured out what was happening and now I am more careful.

I want to clarify the last a bit - the problem is that if I hit right above the opti-switch "off/on" toggle spot, the machine registers the touch with the tab above and switches screens and then registers the same tough as the "off/on" toggle for the stitching. It happens with one quick touch of the screen. It really freaked me out at first, but when I checked the setting and saw it was set to off and worked fine when I switched it back on. Again, it would not stop stitching until it reached the end of the row (repeats) and I'd go back for the start of the next row. After this happened a few more times, I really started slowing down and paying more attention and figured it out. It's like the programming for that screen has the locations a bit off and pressing the opti stitch on the high side of the area ends up turning off the stitching on the next screen.

I have not updated the software for a few years, maybe it's time to do that again!

quiltsfor

this is Ghost Stitching: Experiencing ghost stitching (note: quilter has a different machine in this link)

Peckish

Ok now that I have a better idea of what the issue is....
My friend Cindi had this issue with her Janome. She tried everything, finally her husband took apart her foot pedal and found it packed with hair, dust, and lint. Cleaned it all out and it worked good as new. Another friend of mine had the same issue and replaced the foot pedal entirely; problem solved.
What kind of machine are you using? I'm thinking maybe the issue isn't with the software, it's with the connections somewhere.

dunster

There seem to be two different descriptions of ghost stitching in the thread. One is the link quiltsfor provided, where the machine continues to move on its own after the pedal is released. I can understand why that would be called ghost stitching, because it's as if a ghost is doing it, but it's really the pedal. But the original post was about a computerized machine, and so I don't think this is what she means by ghost stitching. It sounds more like Macybaby's description of the machine moving its way through a design without actually stitching it.

Peckish

Yeah, that's why I was asking what kind of machine the OP was using. I think we need more information. Hoping the OP comes back to respond and clarify....

mkc

Prostitcher Lite is going to be on a HandiQuilter Moxie - or possibly a Simply Sixteen - small longarm on a frame. Prostitcher Lite is robotics for smaller throat HQ longarms.