Lessons

Lesson Info

Stitches and Threads

Let's switch back to a regular needle and a regular thread excuse me a regular regular needle on regular threats let's swap that back and we'll talk about threads just a little bit different type types of threads so again we want that flat sign to the back and sorry and make sure it's all the way up tighten that up give that one little tweet with the screwdriver and then I'm just going to put a regular weight of thread on here let's change our color so we can see that a little better and all switch to a yellow how about that and again like that take up lever up this is up in the highest position and we'll go around make sure it slips into the take up lever look it around like so and then use our automatic needle threat er and we're ready to resume stitching now ok one thing about guiding your fabric through here too that I didn't show you but see I guess that can use this is where do you guide it? Where do you stitch especially if you're a new sewer? I find a lot that what new sewers t...

end to do is just stare at the needle and just so and just watch the needle going up and down and what happens there is you're not really paying attention to how your guiding this in here in your scene khun drift off you're not really keeping this nice and level when you so she skipped piece of fabric out of here when you so a seam we'll just use this piece is an example you have your seem and then everything to the right of where you stitches your seem allowance so when you're looking at patterns, projects and so on it'll usually tell you what the suggested seem allowances and doll clothes and quilts are often quarter inch seam allowance home to court projects are often half inch garments most garment patterns say they want a five eighths inch same allowance and so you have here on your needle plate there are markings that tell you five eighths half and so on and you can keep the edge of your fabric lined up with the edges so you want to kind of watch over here? Well, this is really where you want to look you don't want to just stare at the needle because you know it's going to so where it's going to so you want to watch and keep the edge here so that you're having a nice consistent see malone's as your stitching one thing that folks sometimes do and their new and they they have a hard time maybe trying to eyeball that is to just use a little piece of like masking tape or painter's tape or something like that to give themselves a little bit more of ah a clear edge for guiding that so as your sewing that's much more visible than following a line on the needle place until you're used to it yes oh um do we have any questions so far and otherwise I'll just continue you know, I think we are good to go ok? I just wanted to give another shout out to our eleven year old student in ohio haley, who has actually hasn't stopped stitching since we started the hot and is making just like you have there on an example of all the different stitches that baby this is actually all the stitches that are built into this machine there's quite a few more here than the one we had this morning this's a computerized machine and that was a mechanical machine but I'll be talking about some be using men some of these later on I'll show you some different things to do with some of these stitches, but over here on the machine what I wanted to show you next was our stitch length and our stitch with control I think I'll use this darker fabrics cause I've got a yellow thread in here that's not going to show up very well on that light ones you won't see it okay, so we'll put that in here so here my stitches air all indicated by a number down below each one and so you would look here and I think well, I want to so the zigzag stitch, so I would find stitch, it says number three, so I would dial in number three and then I would so and you'll notice here that I have a pre selected whip and a pre selected length, and you'll know that it's the default setting because there's a dh line underneath the number if I move off of that, the line disappears, but if you want to come back to home, so to speak, you'll know where you are because that line is there so that's just a little tip about howto know where you are with your stitches, and if you change to another stitch like maybe you played with your stitch and you got it just the way you liked it, you thought, oh, I need to go back to straight stitch and so a seam and then I'm going to come back and use that stitch again the settings that you change to actually stay in that working memory until you would turn the machine off so that's really neat, you can go back and forth, you don't have to keep resetting and if you you know, go to seoul button on her and then going to what I want to go back to that stitch that you selected so here's just a zigzag stitch and we'll just select it. And here you see, just kind of a pre selected length and with but if I wanted to lengthen that stitch out, just increase it however long I want that just makes the stitches further apart. Like what we have here, this is very, very dense. So you go down to a much smaller number, scroll down to a smaller number for dense stitches and the the higher the number goes, the more open or the more space in between the stitches. So that's, what stitch length does for you? And I was showing this example earlier today to a cz well, here's the difference it makes on a straight stitch you might use thes really short stitches for your silk ease your lighter weight fabrics, this medium setting more for woven fabrics and the longer setting for like the heavier heavier seems that we do here again, this zigzag here's unexamined of a decorative stitch where just by changing the stitch length, it gets a completely different look. And you can do that with nearly all of these so that's really a lot of fun. It almost it almost increases the number of stitches, so to speak, because you can change the way they look s o feel free to experiment with that and with different threads. Ok, so speaking of different threads, I want to talk to you a little bit about the different threads that are on the market today, because that also plays a part in what you're sewing. Looks like way move the work from the machine over here. I'll just bring some of these over. I've got some all purpose thread. And then this these two particular spools air from coats and clark available pretty much everywhere. And these are their older style spools. And these are the newer style spools, it's all purpose thread great for your quilting in your garment construction. One thing I the reason I wanted to point out these different schools is because this is the newer style on this is the older style you might have some of these older styles like this and what's different about them is this one has, like a little slot here. Where when when it's new in this school like this, you can see where the end of the thread was tucked in, and you pull that out there's like a slit. And what sometimes happens with folks is they put this on the machine to sew, and then, when the threat is unreeling on the thread, could possibly get caught in that little slit so what you wanted and then what happens is it's not feeding through the machine and then you're bending or breaking needles and what is wrong and it's just getting cotton on your little slit here so we want to just flip that spool over so that's over on that end over here and it won't bother you at all and you can just continue to use those these newer ones they've got now he's like little retainers where these threads just slide in and tuck away like that so the slits aren't there anymore but that's just a neat little tip in case you're if you're breaking needles a lot like what is happening I keep threading my machine it might just be getting caught there so just turn those around but that's your all purpose thread and then for decorative sewing we've got ray on thread and there's quite a few different tight is that brands and styles of these and what these are these are really, really, really pretty there for your machine decorative stitching um here what I wanted to show you was even though they're really really pretty they're very weak and what that means is there perfectly perfectly wonderful for your deck stitching but you wouldn't want to use thes too so the seam in your pants because that's not going to hold this is strictly for decorative work when use raylan's there's a few different brands the robison anton and sulky and coats and clark has embroidery thread as well the's smaller schools you don't have to buy a big school if you're only going to do a little bit of work with the decorative thread but what I wanted you to see here is that they even come in different weights so this particular one is a sulky forty the larger number means a finer thread and this smaller number means a thicker threat this sulky thirty and when you stitch with them this is a finer thread this is a thicker thread so it'll give you a different result this will be a more pronounced looking stitch but all ray ons and all really pretty and shiny and gorgeous and once you have all these decorative stitches and you start playing with them you're even I was telling the group this morning you're going to even start looking at store bought things differently you go in the store and you're going to start thinking about your stitches and you'll see borders on like tunic tops that have really pretty stitches on the cuffs and collars and I'm going to do that with my sewing machine it's sze amazing how it changes your perspective once you start playing with these and then we also have these air the heavier threads I was talking earlier about like the genes thread that's what these are a couple different colors of those this is a these are thirty weight cotton's eso the's are thicker just like these were thirty weight and forty weight this's a thirty weight cotton and this is a thirty weight and even a twelve wait you'd definitely want a bigger eye needle with ease in fact sometimes we even use those with for coaching with according foot but they come in variegated and solid colors and there are a lot of fun to work with as well but definitely need a larger needle with those um this is an outdoor thread this has been treated so it's great to see you know your you console your patio furniture with it and leave this out in the rain um that's treated specify specifically for that this these air your monofilament nylon threads you might use these for attaching trims the threat is invisible so you can attach a trim and stitch right over it you won't see the thread that this one is like a small color and this is clear so maybe for your darker fabrics you'd use this one for the lighter fabrics she'd used the the clear one these are metallic threads and metallic threads are wonderful what that looks like in a finished something I'll just show you got like a christmas stocking here that we had done so they put just a little bit of bling on some of your project but there's different ones of these there's this's a robinson anton style this is from sulky and from coats they metallic threads you want to make sure the eye of your needle is definitely large enough for these I sometimes hear people say I can't use metallic thread because it shreds in my machine and it's actually not the machine that is shredding your thread it's the needle so you want to that it's funny but in a needle when the threat passes through the same spot given spot in a spool of enough strand of thread passes through the eye of the needle several times before it actually passes on to the fabric and if it's rubbing on an old needle or the needle's too small that's going to shred the thread eso you want to make sure it's definitely being and some of these these are even there almost like hologram me looking threads they kind of remind me a little bit there they're a flat filament and they almost remind you when you look at them close up of like old christmas tree tinsel and these you probably want to go in your accessory pouch here in your machine and we talked earlier about how there was that separate spool pin way have these little school pin felt's and the extra school pin and so threads like that that are maybe some of this some of these metallics you don't want them twisting like they do when they come off laying horizontally they'll feed into the machine flatter as will these hologram e ones if you have them feeding straight in like this. So they're just unreeling flat into here rather than twisting off. And you'll have more success with those. So that will also contribute to the not shredding issue with the metallic.