Lessons

Lesson Info

Threads and Stitch Settings

Over here I'm going to just pull these over there's a lot of different kinds of threat on the market today and this to start out with here is all purpose thread all purpose thread is what you use for construction and these air both two threads that air from quotes and clark you can tell have had this one for a while because um a cz paper is missing off the end of it here but the reason I wanted to show this to you is that this was the older style school that they had and if you recall and you may even have some of these when you take the threat out of it when it's new on the spool there's that little slit on the end of the thread and that actually this is one of the older style schools as well it's just a smaller one but it got caught on that little slip there you want to just make sure that that slit is over on the right hand side so that it doesn't interfere with your thread reeling off the newer schools today they've done away with that and they've got this nice little like retainin...

g slit here it's more of a ring that this just slides into and they did away with that little slip so either way this is your all purpose thread garment construction home to core project construction good all purpose thread for that now, when you can use it for decorative sewing, but very often what you probably want to do for decorative sewing is used a nice ray on thread that here's an example of a ray on here's a ray on, uh, let's see here here's, let's see, is that you hear a couple other ones, the reason I wanted to show you these this and this here's one from sulky, fearsome, different brands of it, this is a robison anton sochi, this robertson anton ray on this is a sulky ray on here's one from coats and clark for machine embroidery, and you'll notice as compared to all purpose thread it's got more of a sheen or a shine to it. So when you're doing your decorative stitching, you're stitching will look shiny and very pretty with this, in which you would do with your ray on thread that is, marry it with bob and phil thread in your bobbin this is bob, and feel thread usually comes in white and black. These air two different brand. They both make black and white, but I just grab to keep the a number of schools on the table down. This is it's, bob, and phil is a lighter weight thread what's nice about it is it makes it allows you to wind more thread onto your bob, and because when you're winding, because the threat is thinner, you just get more of it on your bombing, you're not having to wine bobbins is often the other thing is that on the back side, if you're doing dense decorative stitching like some satin stitching and things will do in just a little while makes the stitching less dense on the back side of your work, so usually you'll do a bob and fill in your bob and ray on thread in your needle for decorative work. For construction, you'll have the same thread in the needle and in the bob and for construction here are they come in different weights as well. Your ran threats come in different waits, here's an example of what to look for their all marked in different way. This one says forty wait this one from sulky, says silky forty here, this one says sulky thirty the the smaller the number like the thirty, the thirty weight thread is thicker than the forty weight thread, so what that will do is just give you a more pronounced look to your stitch, then the forty weights so play with them and you'll start collecting them and really have a lot of fun with all these stitches you have and with different threads. There are also decorative threads that are not shiny like this one from sulky is this brown label is a thirty weight cotton they have won in this orange label. That is a twelve wait cotton and they even come in variegated. All of these even there, ray on one's coming variegated. But these are also really, really pretty for your decorative stitching. There's here's a variegated one here so you can see how that looks. Okay, then we have the metallic threads. Let me show you what those look like. Um, I have often heard people say that I can't use metallic thread with my machine. My machine shreds metallic threat. Actually, your machine doesn't shred it your needles d'oh. So the way to avoid that is to make sure you've got a large enough. Maybe you've been sewing with too small of a needle for metallic thread, so make sure that when the when when you pull that after you thread the machine, when you pull the thread that it's moving freely through the eye of the needle, if it's struggling at all it's the needle eyes too small and you need to go to a little bit bigger needle for that thread. The other thing is that the mattel, especially some of these like this is more of a filament type of thread. This one almost if you look at it really closely, I was telling the group's earlier, this kind of reminds you a little bit about it, like it's, a very fine christmas tree tinsel and what can happen with this or metallic thread if you've got it unreeling off horizontal spool pin is it's already starting to twist before it goes into the thread path, and that will contribute to it's not wanting to seoul, as well as if you put it on your horse or your vertical school pin, and instead of turning as it goes into the thread path it's going to go straight across and go in their flat so you might want to use your auxiliary spool pin for your metallic threads and just set those up there, and they'll just feed smoothly in, and I think you'll find if you're checking that you have there ah, large enough needle and you're feeding that, uh, vertically into the machine that you'll find that that those issues go away for you. Your machine isn't doing it, you're just not setting up properly so okay that your metallics and then we also have this's a jeans wait thread, and you would use this for these air available to or or wherever you get. The threads, and they even call it jeans or top stitching thread. And they come in the very popular colors for you know you want to cut off a pair of jeans for the kids, make them into shorts or your bought a pair of jeans, and you want to have them to fit you. The threads come in the very popular jeans colors I know today now jeans, air top stitched in white there blue, there's, gray and then there's, the traditional kind of gold color. And these are made in those very popular colors, this it's a it's, a it's, a heavier thread you can even see just looking at it. It's a very much course or thicker thread. So you want to make sure you have, like, a least a size sixteen needle in there, and from my basic needle chart that we had on the monitor just a bit ago. You even see that the eye of a heavier duty needle on the right hand side that by of the needle is bigger to accommodate those thicker threads. See what? No, you know, the's all need to marry to have a good experience that you're sewing machine, and then we also have the transparent nylon thread, and here's an example of a sulky version here is one from coats and clark they both make the clear and the smoke but I just bought one of each and where you might use thes if you use thes you can use pretty much all purpose threat in the bobbin or bob and fill in the bob in what I would do with eases thread my needle with this and perhaps if I and if I get time to dio I brought enough to just stay busy for hours but I was get us far as I can but if let's say for example you've got your base fabric and you want to attach a decorative trim with an open toe foot and you go zigs eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs over your trim you don't want your threat to show you just want the trim to show and you could use a transparent thread that would just kind of disappear into the trim and uh the reason these come in two different colors is thie lighter one is more for the lighter colored trims or fabrics and the darker one they sometimes call that smoke clear and smoke this one you would use for the darker colored trims or fabrics so that your polly esther's here is one that is an outdoor thread and it's marked that says outdoor and that one has been treated so that if you make your outdoor patio furniture and things this can get weathered on and it won't be affected by that so there's also a hundred percent quilting thread at the fabric store and I reason I'm bringing that up is theirs the machine quilting thread and there's hand quilting thread and you don't want to just find the word quilting and grab it and say I got quilting thread I want to use ah hand quilting thread for hand quilting machine quilting thread for machine quilting and the way that they're different hand quilting thread has been treated with a type of glaze I don't if that's the right word but it's because you go in and out of your fabric with hand needle and the whole length of the threat is constantly going in and out of the fabric as opposed to machine sewing where that's not the case in if you use hand quilting thread in your sewing machine, it can leave deposits on your tension and some of the internal mechanisms and maybe make your machine not run properly. So leave the hand quilting thread for hand quilting and machine quilting thread for machine quoting machine quoting threat is usually one hundred percent cotton like many of your fabrics are so they marry well together so that's just a brief, brief brief thread lesson so let's go ahead and start playing with some of our stitches okay, get these out of our way do you have any questions there so far? Well I reset this let me take a look I did like some of the comments for the folks who are in the chat room are where with the way they go they are excited to see when you were spinning the bob in terms of how they weren't able to do that previously and now they have been in light and that's great you know I just feel I you know you get all excited to seoul and if you our understanding what you're doing wrong you just your your inspiration goes away and if we're able to fix that for you I'm thrilled so exactly it was that automatic threat er that some folks hadn't been able to get right great so seeing you actually do it was and that quick start guide that was packing machine and your manual have pictures of that as well so maybe know that you actually saw demonstrated the pictures well come to life a little more so yeah there's a difference between saying yeah yeah a greeting somebody actually do it I agree so you know, I think I am going toe change this to another color just cause I'm going to do a little decorative stitching here but I want to pick something that's gonna show up here we go okay? So let's re thread so I'm going to snap that in here like so and I wanna make sure my take up levers up looks good presser foot lifters up make sure it goes in the eye of the take up clever and then here we go will do that needle thread her again so we're going to bring that down, swing it around you wrap it around that little finger on the side so that it helps you hold it straight across so as you tuck that up underneath the needle that little hook that comes into the eye of the needle I mean then when you release there we go and there's that loop and I just grab it we're good to go already so over here on the front of your machine you've got your stitch selection and there's an lcd screen that shows me now in this case I've got stitched zero zero which is straight stitch and I want to move to say is things and by the way, let me just back up it shows me that my optimum stitch the it's in center needle position, which is three and a half because this is a seven millimeter stitch width on this machine so center would be three and a half and that's why it says three point five there there's no with obviously on a straight stitch, but you can use your stitch with buttons when you're sitting straight stitch mode to move your needle into various needle positions I think thirteen of them all together but we want to leave it at the three point five for now and then this is my these arrows are my stitch with these are my stitch length these buttons here it's the tens column underneath the lcd screen and the single digits column and I would look for my stitch by number on the panel and then press my buttons to select the stitch by number and then so so to start out with just to show you how the length and with buttons work oh by the way take a look and you'll see right now the optimum lengthened with there's a there's an underline underneath the number if I move off of the priest set our optimum one that selected for me when I speak the stitch you see that line goes away it's okay to change it no problem you can make it wherever you want but if you want to know what kind of the home setting was you'll always know when you've gotten there because that little line will come back that's just a neat little tip to know and the other nice thing is if I've modified one of these stitches I played with the length and width setting and I sold with it a little bit and then I go back to maybe I did a little decorative stitching and that that all I need tio top stitch that pocket back on my dress now and then I'd come back and I want to do some more stitching with that setting the machine will hold that change setting for that stitch even if I move off that stitch as long as I haven't turned the machine off so that that's that's really a nice convenience for you as well so let's go ahead and do a little bit with our stitch length and stitch wind and I'm going to take a piece of fabric here I've got my cotton and I'm going to choose here straight stitch optimum stitch length but we can change that to be longer we can actually lengthen that out two four point eight sometimes certain and it'll seem to sow a lot faster too when I show you this you can see the difference I've got really short stitches here and see just a little touch of that bomb cause I would white in the bobbin but that's a nice balance stitch when you do your adjuster stitch length for six egg the it looks different but we pick stitch zero three and hear my optimum with is a five point o I can make it wider or narrower but right now we're talking about stitch length which is the up and down buttons and it gives me a medium stitch length to start but here's an example of when you want to change the length of your stitch on his eggs egg it usually comes out fairly open like this. But as I make the numbers shorter and shorter and shorter over here in the window, these stitches get closer together closer together, closer together, until I've got a very, very short stitch length to do a satin stitch, which will do in just a little bit because your machine comes with a satin foot for applicator. And we're going to talk about that in just a little bit so that your stitch with setting our extreme used its length setting. Here, too, is an example of straight stitch and a short, medium and long length zigzag a shorter length and as you open it up and even one of the decorative stitches shorter takes a whole different takes on a whole new look as you open up the stitch length and lengthen that out. So it really almost increases thie because it increases your options for how you use your stitches. They take on a whole new look when you lengthen them or change the with.