Sewing Machine Woes

I couldn't bear to talk about it yesterday, because it was too painful. I wanted to spend all of Friday sewing the bloody neckers for beavers. I wanted to, I really did. I'm really close to being done. I just need to finish with the bias tape around the outer edge, then quickly sew the group badge on.


But alas, I sat down to sew the first bit of bias tape and when I got to the end of the bias tape and went to turn it around to sew on the right side, disaster! My tension was so wonky I couldn't even bear to take pictures. But the bottome thread was pulling so tightly that I had standing loops in my upper thread. One little snip and the bottom thread pulled out like a ripe raspberry.
To attemt to fix this I turned my upper tension nearly as high as it could go -Still no luck.
I turned by bottom tension to just a hairsbreath away from outrageously loose - Still no luck.
I re-threaded everything, played with my tension again and finally, when I was well past ready to throw something I got it working well enough that I'm not embarassed to say I sewed it.
But I did get through six neckers. I still had to play with my tension far to often to keep it neat, which is why I only finished six, but there's only so much hassle over my machine I can take at any one time.
Anyone have any suggestions when your tension is that bad?