Onwards ever Onwards

The quilt is progressing despite my sewing machine's best efforts to thwart me. The back was sewn up in a snap and on Tuesday I took a slightly longer than normal lunch to baste the sucker together.

The front....

... and ze back.

And now the bit I was dreading - the quilting. I knew there was reason to be afraid! My machine is NOT LIKING. Not liking AT ALL. I did little test sandwiches that my machine loved, breezed through making perfectly even stitches that were a thing of beauty. But put the actual quilt in there and nuh-uh.

There is something wrong with the tension of the upper thread and it keeps snapping. I checked my machine's manual and it said to lower the tension (duh!) but when I do this even by the merest smidgen.... the stitches on the bottom look like Ass with a capital A. And the thread still snaps anyways. I have called my machine very many names over the past few days, none of which bear repeating and at one point I almost punched it. I didn't, though. I've come to the realisation that it might actually be the thread that is the problem. I bought 1000m of Gutterman 100% polyester as recommended by the quilt-along, but as I've got further into the spool I've noticed that the thread seems to be overly taut.

With time running out to get this sucker finished before I head to Canada (where the intend recipients have moved) on MONDAY, I have no leeway to figure out a solution other than to curse, curse some more, and knot and hide the ends of all those rows of quilting by hand. I really hope this thing makes it through the wash....