NOOOOO!!!! don't give up. take a break for the night. and tomorrow morning have a cup of coco and a chocolate bar. then do the dishes and then pull out the machine and clean it. then do a test run. You might be surprised that the feed dogs do drop. I have a cheep singer and a janome and the feed dogs on both drop. just check and they may be up but caught on something and not moving. try running the machine with out fabric and see if they move. hope this helps.

Are you using cotton fabric or that oil cloth?

Do you have any scraps? Make a few tests with fabric and batting same
thickness as your project...if there are four layers, use same.
Try adjusting your tension little by little in one direction. If it gets worse,
go the other way. Again, gradually.

Also, start with a new needle. This might help.

I'm sorry but maybe try again from the start.... Let us know what happened when you figure it out.

I really like doing hand stitch in the ditch for these smaller projects, if you use the right color thread it is pretty much invisible,( if you want it to be and not part of the design.)

excuse the weird PM...too early for me! hope your machine decides to work better this morning. I'm still thinking thru the problem...with the bottom not moving thru and the top moving thru (with batting) it sounds like a feed dog problem...the thickness of the batting making the difference. It's possible something happened between the runner and this placemat but I'm not the one to determine what. This discrepancy would also cause the puckering.

I normally suggest that a person not touch their bobbin tension, but in this case, did you try adjusting it? Not sure why it would suddenly tighten up on you tho...so again, I'm cautious about changing it.

I occasionally get a similar problem when at the beginning of a seam one of my thread tails gets caught up in the seam or in the bobbin case...did that happen by any chance? I try to hold them when I start a seam but sometimes get too busy to remember and that's when it happens.

I had the same thing happen with my machine a few weeks ago just out of the blue. Made me crazy!!! As it turned out...I tried all the things mentioned above EXCEPT I didn't take the bobbin case out.........WELLLLLLLLL when I finally did that there was a piece of FUZZ hidden... After I cleaned the bobbin area out really good.....PRESTO! Back to stitch'en properly. Just keep playing...... IT WILL go back to normal..... Quilters are tested every day. :) :) :)

Good luck!

Hope this isn't a repeat, but as I learned the hard way, you REALLY need a walking foot, it feeds the layers through equally, this material or batting may be enough different that it really matters.
Rita

I think my machine may be ok now. I took it in to a LQS and the clerk was nice enough to check things out. We believe it may have been a tension problem. Time will tell.