Sewing Machine Tips that Aren't in the Manual

Sewing Machine Tips that Aren't in the Manual

My favorite way of gathering fabric for random gathers, is to zigzag over a cord.  Your home-economics teacher will have a recommendation of some fancy, expensive cotton cord called "gimp", but I've found crochet cotton, like Speed Cro Sheen works really well and is very cheap. The tricky part is figuring out a way to hold the cord in place while you are sewing.  My machine has an embroidery foot with a hole in it and there are cording feet available that will work. If you have neither, you can try using your buttonhole foot. All you need is a hole or a wedge that will keep the cord aligned.  The cord will not break the way the basting stitches will. I'll demonstrate this.

To achieve a smooth curve, shorten your stitch length. This will also allow you to trim closer to the sewing line and turn right side out with less fuss. When working on a piece with lots and lots of really tight curves, like dagging for a houp, try using lingerie thread which is finer than regular thread. It will allow you to make your stitches even smaller. 

I de-center my needle and use an edge stitching foot for topstitching. If you don't have an edge stitching foot a blind hem foot will work, but make sure that you aren't putting the needle where it will hit the part of the foot. This allows me to topstitch without paying attention. Well, not really, but I don't have to sweat over it to get pretty darned good results.  This also works great for waistbands and some hems.

Shorten your stitch length at corners that will be turned. This allows you to clip closer to the seam line with less fraying and will help prevent poking through when you turn the point. With fabric that frays and ravels a lot, nothing will help but a finished edge. You'll still have fraying at a corner, especially after a few washes. I suggest using topstitching to help stabilize the fabric. 

Drop or cover your feed dogs and move the fabric in any direction at all. This is often used for machine embroidery or it can be used for machine quilting or embellishment. If you use this with a cording foot, you can get some spectacular couching done by machine.  I'll demonstrate this.

When sewing a bias edge to a straight grain edge, put the bias on the bottom. The feed dogs will keep the bias edge from stretching as much as it passes under the needle. When easing in fabric, put the long edge down, the short edge up. The feed dogs will help with the easing, too.  The presser foot drags on the fabric, the feed dogs push the fabric forward.

There are double needles, wing needles, needles designed for use on particular fabrics and special needles for leather. Take advantage of these and change your needle for each project. One needle per garment is a good rule of thumb.  I'll have some needles out for folks to look at.

It is possible to adjust the tension not only on the top thread, but also on the bobbin in some machines. If you do this, be prepared to spend a LOT of time fidgeting to get the bobbin tension set back to normal. I strongly suggest purchasing an additional bobbin case just for adjusting the tension and leaving one at the factory setting. Adjusting bobbin tension will allow you to make rolled hems with a zigzag stitch, create better buttonholes and sew through thicker fabrics with balanced tension.  My bobbin case has a hole in the 'finger' that will provide slightly higher tension. I don't have to fuss with the tension screw.

Do not sew across a pin if you can help it. Remove them before the fabric passes under the presser foot.  There are several reasons. If the pin breaks and parts fly into your eye, the emergency room will remove them with a magnet. I had this information from a woman who had lived through it. No loss of vision, but still… You can also break your needle like this, though pins are usually wimpier metal. You can damage the throat plate of your sewing machine by sewing over pins. A novice mechanic can glance at your machine and spot the damage. Throat plates can be replaced on better machines, but they aren't cheap!  Striking a pin can also disturb the timing of your machine. That is an expensive repair and is not always successful. The machine might never run as well again.

If you have a machine that has a DC motor, you should never have to put your hands on the hand wheel to adjust the needle position. If your machine requires you to use the hand wheel, try not to spin it forwards and backwards. Only move it in one direction.  Mechanics have told me that it is frequently a cause of broken timing.  Don't use the hand wheel to 'help' your machine over a bulky seam. That's hard on the timing, too.  Try a different needle, or hand sew that little bit. 

Get the lint out of your machine after each garment if you can and if not, as frequently as you can manage. Do not ever blow into the machine; the moisture in your breath is bad for the metal. If you use canned air you are risking blowing some of the lint farther into the machine, where you can't see. Use a vacuum instead. If you check your manual, they will tell you where your machine needs to be oiled.  If you sew a lot, you should take your machine in on an annual basis for cleaning and oiling and tune-ups. I find dropping it off before I go on vacation works really well. I don't miss it if I'm not at home.  Even the El Cheapo machines will benefit from an annual service.

When crossing over an already bulky seam, you can have all sorts of tension problems and fabric feeding problems. Take a scrap of fabric and roll it up to the desired thickness. You might even want to seam it down, but it isn't required. Then place that fabric scrap next to the bulky seam and use it to keep the presser foot flat and level. You aren't going to include it in the seam.  This works wonders to help with feeding the fabric and also with the tension. I'll demonstrate this.

Putting a piece of masking tape on the throat plate to indicate an odd seam allowance will let you make seams that are consistent. This often helps with hemming.

Some machines come with a little metal doohickey that you can screw onto the shank and set as a guide for odd seam allowances. This will also allow you to put in parallel rows of quilting, place braid an exact distance from the edge of something and similar tasks.  I'll have seam guides for you to look at.

I thought Dual Duty was perfectly good thread until I started using the Metrosene and Guterman threads. If you really can't tell the difference, go right ahead and use the thread that you have. Don't feel guilty. But if you try using the European threads for a while and then go back to Dual Duty, you might not be happy with DD any more. Thread does not age well.  It gets brittle after being stored and will lint more and break easily. In clothing, it gets wet regularly when washed and stays strong.  Stored on a spool, it dries out and gets fragile. Wetting a spool of old thread won't help because you can't reverse the breakdown that happens when it dries out.  Even living in a damp climate, thread will still dry out and age.  BTW, never use hand quilting thread in a sewing machine. It is coated with a potato starch to make it easier to handle. The potato starch is abrasive and will wear out the metal parts of the machine as it passes through.  Avoid the expensive repairs if you can.

The pressure of the presser foot on the fabric can sometimes be adjusted. This is useful when sewing on delicate fabric, sewing on the bias or sewing knits. Not that we use knits for garb, but it's still useful to know. Lighter pressure for the delicate stuff, heavier pressure for heavy fabrics. Sometimes an incorrect presser foot pressure will cause the top and bottom layers to shift as you sew them.  I don't adjust presser foot pressure often, but when I need to adjust it, nothing else will work quite as well to fix the problem.

I have been known to use iron on spray starch to 're-size' prewashed fabric. This is often when I'm using a lightweight, delicate fabric that wants to shift and creep over as I'm sewing on it. Just a light starch and it behaves a lot better. 

This comes to us from the machine embroidery field. It's designed to be torn away from an embroidered area. I use small bits of this to reinforce the fabric under a buttonhole. I'll demonstrate this. I keep a pile of these pre cut bits handy in my sewing table.

I have one of these that my machine fits into. I have a flat table surface to sew on. It helps with large, heavy projects and makes me more comfortable overall.  I didn't get a hydraulic lift because I never put the machine away. I put a dust cover over it and leave my sewing room.  Even an inexpensive student type table will help you sew faster and more comfortably.

Sergers are an entirely different machine than a regular sewing machine. Sometimes called overlockers, they seam and finish the edge in one pass. I most frequently use mine to finish the edges of garment pieces before I assemble the garment.  They are much faster than zigzagging the edges.  They work really well on loosely woven fabric and on knits. We aren't going to go into sergers in this class, but knowing that they exist is useful.  Knowing someone who will let you borrow theirs is also useful.  Having one of your own the most useful of all. 

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