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Threading your Singer - 5400

Hello internet and welcome to creative live my name is ken klosterman and I am your host today and I am with the lovely becky hanson from singer and we are doing our second what is six different classes of the course of these street is alive here from our seattle studio and this is the singer so mate fifty four hundred model and so what we're going to be doing is just going through and learning from a dizzy how to use this beautiful machine we're going to do what comes with the machine and then if there's time left over I'm going to even show you some accessories that can make it do even more fantastic now if you weren't with us this morning becky hanson has been teaching for singer sewing for thirty years it's just very hard to believe she also does a number of tutorials that you can watch on singer sowings youtube channel a swell a cz at the blog's so make sure you go check out follow them on twitter at singer co I love how focused singer is on education and so that people can learn ...

how to use the machines that they buy which is why you're here and more and more they're doing it online that's right that's right absolutely all right when I let you take it already late about kay so to get started um I'm going to first of all show you box x and what? The reason I want to do this is I want to tell you that when you whether you are considering purchasing the machine or you already have it, we really encourage you to hang on to your box. And the reason why is that if you ever need to transport it or if you ever need to send it for any kind of service or warranty work, the best player, the best way to transport it isn't something that fits it perfectly. So we really encourage you to hang on to that if you're able to okay? And before we get started, I just thought it would be kind of fun if you saw what thie inside of your machine looks like. And so I brought along with me. I like to call these the machines skeletons but I know sometimes today people wonder because the machines air so portable are they all is heavy duty is as thie old machines were and I think you can see here that where it's really important like the frame and a lot of all your mechanisms in here are where it's important that it's metal it is and the composite on the outside of the machine is a lighter weight material just to keep it portable for you, so I wanted to just rest your fears that this is indeed a well made machine no, I'm going to start to hear with just telling you a little bit about what comes with your machine and when you open the box there will be a little and below kind of sealed in here and you've got some materials of course without goes without saying you get a machine instruction manual and I would really encourage you to sit down if you own the machine already please take a look through your manual read it cover to cover you'd be surprised what you learn about your machine when you read your manual just little things that you didn't even you thought you knew that you didn't know or it might be in here and um it's it's got a lot of information about thread and needles and things were going to talk about today as well. There's ah warranty information information about getting in touch with singer and then there's also this wonderful big quick start guide this paper quick start guide we call it and this is how to wind and thread you're bob in into the machine and you flip it over to side too and then it goes into how to thread the machine and use your automatic needle threat er and so that you might want to even keep hand because you might use that again and again it's all the steps to correctly thread but I'm going to show you that today too and there's also a dvd in here called ready set so and this is about one hour video that I filmed quite some time ago maybe about five years ago but it's sewing machine basics and there's even press her feet and things are in here so you might want to you'll be getting that in your box as well so we'll go ahead and get started so to get started we need to thread the machine and we're going to start but before we do that I think I'm going to stop and give you a little tour of the parts let's do that first so up here rather than carry handle that raises up there's a slot in the back here for your fingers that you can reach in here and it's the machine is completely portable and when you reach further back here you'll see there's old a place where the school the horizontal spool pin raises up and ready to receive the thread this is your bob and winding spindle and you're bob and winding stop this is your bob intention disc and we're going to use that in just a moment. This is a thread guide here's your thread path your tension denial this is your reverse button but it also is attacking stitch button which I'll talk about when we get ready to talk about decorative stitches I'm turning my hand well toward me and you see this a little silver piece coming out from the top here and that is called your take up lever and I'm gonna spend a little more time on that in just a moment. This is your needle, of course, and your needle clamp, needle clamps screw this is the lever for your automatic needle threat or which will use thiss is a lever for the when we get ready to sew a button hole and I'll use that in a moment your needle plate with markings I'll talk about this is your over here on the side of the machine there is a hand wheel that you always want to turn toward you we never turn hand wheels going backwards away from us we always turn those toward us it some it can jam your machine if you try to make it so in the other direction so always turn that toward you. And then here on the front of the machine we have the lcd display and we've gotta siri's of buttons the's, but two buttons here are like the tens column in the single digits column, and so when I see all my stitches displayed on the panel, you'll find the stitch that you want to sew and then press your buttons to dial in the stitch number and the optimum stitch lengthen with their selected for you so you can just start sewing but if you wanted to adjust the length and with you can do that with the width adjustment buttons or the length adjustment buttons and then over here we have the presser foot lifter this is very important we'll talk about that this converts my machine to a free arm when I remove this removable extension table and what I want to show you here is that this is where your machine accessories are stored. I know sometimes we get calls at our customer service department people will say I never got my accessories but you did there in here so you want to have a look in there and and uh and I'll show you what's in here so we can remove all of this stuff and we're going to use it all today too so for this out we go so what you have here is your buttonhole foot and we have spool pin felt's the's are for when there's a new exhilarate spool pin and this is for when we do twin needle sewing so if I have time I'll try to show you some twin needlework and this is a feed dawg cover plate or a darn darning plate they sometimes call this will use that extra bobbins there's a zipper foot and there's a screwdriver this is a lint brush there's when you pull this out and turn it around it's also a seam ripper or as we like to say, an unsold were and so you get that and so extra needles and you're buttonhole foot for sewing buttons this's machine does a buttonhole in one easy step so will demonstrate that and then this is your school cap for you put this on when you put your school on to get wind you're bobbing and thread your machine so let's go ahead and do that and to start out I'm going to open a move this stuff out of my way and we're going to start out by winding a bobbin and to do that I need to just set my school on my machine you want your thread coming off like this and we'll slide that on and put our spoke cap on and and and we've got to get our bob and out of our bob in case so you'll come down here. This is a front load style mission frontload bob in style machine opened this up and there's a hinged latch here so you'll pull this salt with your finger and just slide this out. Now what you'll notice here when I dump out my bob and that this is a metal bob in there are you get, uh, extra bobbins with your machine as well, but you may want to buy more collect more because I know a lot of times you put threat on there and I kind of want to save your bobbins for next time you want to use that same color thread, so you might want to purchase more bob, and so I want to show you what to look for when you purchase more bobbins I have here a collection of packages of bobbins that are available pretty much anywhere, so notions, air sold fabric stores and some of the retailers that carrier products have these also on the on the wall, and you'll notice that they all say singer and they all say bobbins, but they're very different and you'll you'll notice here that this one says class sixty six and this one says class sixty six we don't want those are bob in is the class fifteen metal bobbin, and you can see that this looks just like these right here that's the one we want, we don't want class sixty six, the class sixty six looks like this, and you can see not only is it the transparent style, but it's not even the same shape, so this wouldn't work at all in our machine, so we don't want these at all, and we don't want these even though they're metal because they're also not the right shape they wouldn't even so in our we would have stitching problems, and we don't want those bobbins, so those go away and now this these all say class fifteen but you'll notice this one says fifteen j that's for a different series of machines so we don't want that one both of these say class fifteen so you wonder could I substitute the plastic transparent ones for the metal ones? And the answer to that is also know because the machine is calibrated and set for the weight of this particular bob in so you want to use it exactly the style of bob and that comes with your machine when looking for extras so if you go to purchase additional bobbins, make sure you look for class fifteen with the metal bobbin so that makes a really big difference in your sewing experience so I wanted to really call your attention to that so let's go ahead and wind one so we've got our thread on the top of the machine and what I want you to see here is I'm going to raise the presser foot lifter that's whenever we get ready to start threading a machine you want to have that presser foot lifter raise so and I'll explain in just a moment now the threat path for the thread when you wind a bobbin is marked at the top of the machine there's a little diagram right here and for doing a bobbin we'll bring it first into this first thread guide and then we're going to bring it around this bob and winding tension disc kind of like a little letter e like a curse of letter e will wrap it around there. So let's do that. We're going to slip this in here like so there's, like two little blades there. And you wanted to just make sure it slides in between those two little blades and then wrap it around like a small letter e put a little tension on it feels like it's got a little tension so that's good. And then when you put this on the bob and winding spindle, we're going to start first by taking our threat and putting it from center through one of the holes out the top. So come in from the middle through one of the holes out the top. Grab the thread and then set it on your bob and winding spindle and then push that to the right, too. Uh uh, engaged that, and then we'll step on the foot controller, step on the foot controller and start whining that bob and after a two girls just a couple of times around, we'll stop and trim this thread at the top. And then resume filling the bobbin way when the threat gets like enough on the on the bobbin when it rubs up against the bobbin one year stop it will stop spinning that's if you want to fill the bob and you don't have to feel it just to use it if you want to just put a little bit on for the project you're working on um that's fine so I'm gonna probably use this thread quite a bit today so I'll put about a least a half a bob in full on here and then push that over to the left and lifted off and then we're going to trim the thread oh another thing I forgot to mention to you earlier too we're talking about bobbins to use bobbins not to use sometimes folks like to use these paper pre filled bobbins, but we don't recommend those either again, you can almost imagine that they're not waited the same as ah the metal bob and is for this machine the machine is calibrated for the metal bob and so you don't want to use the paper ones either they're not even the same winds look it's like half almost half the with so I want to use those metal metal bobbins class fifteen so then when you place this in your bobbin um case lay this in here like soul and then when you pull this thread the bob and should turn clockwise if you have your bobbing in here and you turn it around, you put it in the wrong way and it turns against the clock that is not correct, and that could result in stitch problems as well. So when you put it in here, you want to turn it around and make sure it's turning clockwise, then there's a little slip right here that it slides into, and then we bring it around like so, and you should kind of hear it or feel it click into place, so I'll do that for you one more time. Drop it in so it's turning clockwise, slip it into this little slot right here, bring it around this little finger and you feel it just snap in place. And then when we loaded into the front of the machine, we're going to hold it by this hinged latch and this arm that comes straight up this top of this should be right at twelve o'clock, so put it in a straightforward, and you almost feel it seat itself into place. If you don't feel it, go right into place, it might twirl and drop, and you just didn't get it seated properly, so while you're holding this hinged latch with the top of this arm at twelve o'clock, feel itjust kind of click and seat into place and then our bobbin is ready to go and then we're ready to thread the top of the machine the top of your machine will still come through this same path like it shows at the top of your diagram and you want to slip it between these two pieces here but before we proceed you want to do one thing that's really really important and that is to raise your press afoot lifter this is one of the most important things when you're threading your sewing machine because when you when you lose when you lift the presser foot lifter it actually opens the tension so that it will receive the thread if you leave this down when you start to thread and even though you go in all the right places and you said I've done everything the right way according to the book et cetera it didn't go in the tension and believe it or not when you start sewing it's going to look like a mess probably on the underside of your fabric like how could that be that it was the upper thread but just trust me it is it's because the upper threat just didn't have any tension on it and it's all collecting down underneath there so the most important thing you can do before you start threading your sewing machine is to lift your presser foot lifter that should be step one of threading the top thread your threat goes up here and then slip it into your guide and then before we proceed we want to make sure this take up lever is in that position like that it should kind of be peering out over the top of the machine there this is very important is goes up and down while you stitch it goes up, it comes way down and it goes way up inside the machine and if you don't have that in its upright position if it's down here when you when you're threading the machine even though you come around and come up and come around like just following the thread path just like it's indicated and mark down the front of the machine if it doesn't go into the eye of the take up lever it's not going to be threaded right and you'll start sewing and it'll sound could chunka chunka chunka really loud and it's just the threat just can't move so it really needs to go in the eye of that take up lever. So if you turn your hand well toward you until you see that up in its highest position, then you're ready to bring this thread down into your thread path underneath it's like a u turn bring it back up over the top and then from right toe left just like it shows here in this number four up come down and then come down again and then we're ready to thread down at the eye of the needle so I'm going to do that for you one more time just make sure you got it so presser foot lifter is raised we're going to slip our threat into these guides take up lever is up there in its highest position and we come down step number two is here step number three is thie u turn and all of this is in your manual too and then appear from right toe left number four into the eye of the take up lever you want to just take a look and make sure it slipped in there and it did and then we come on down and we're ready to proceed with the rest of our threating so there's a little ah guide right here you just tuck it behind the guide and then with the needle in its highest position. This is your automatic needle thread her and what you'll do is bring this down, push it down and then back so you'll bring it down and then bring it forward put put pushback here, which brings this whole mechanism or this little device forward now what's actually happening here here's going to show you here with my hands, but this is like the eye of your needle and this little mechanism when it comes around there's like a little hook in it and it comes swinging around like this and it comes into the eye of the needle so when you have your threat and you bring it around like so it pulls that little loop through, so then you can just grab the loop and thread and you don't have to strain your eyes anymore to see to thread the eye of your needle so we'll do that now. So it's it's over there the little hook is into the eye of the needle and I'll tuck my threat and there when I release this back, it pulls this little loop and I just grabbed the loop and there's my needle threat er like so so I'll do that one more time because I know sometimes folks go, how does that work? We'll do that again, so we'll bring the threat around tuck it in that little hook that's come through the eye of my needle release and there's that little loop and then we'll pull that through and now our top of our machine is threaded are ominous threaded the only thing that we have left to do is bring the needle thread or the excuse me, the bob and thread up to the top so we'll turn our hand well toward us as we just lightly tug on the bob are the upper thread and you see the loop of that bob and thread come through and we'll bring those. Put those both under the presser foot. And then we can close the door. Put our extension table back on the machine. And now we're ready to start stitching just that easy.