Thursday Tip // Threading a machine

Back to basics this week with a quick video tutorial on threading your machine. We’ve welcomed a lot of new sewists to the studio lately, including a new bunch of kids and we can’t stop thinking about all those basic steps in the sewing journey that can’t be overlooked.

Our weekly #WSThursdayTips blog series gives us the opportunity to share our sewing expertise with the community and we love the chance to pump you full of confidence with all of our tips and tricks. We love hearing when you save tips for future reference and we also want to let you know that you can search for our tips on Instagram with the hashtag #WSThursdayTips.

Even though every sewing machine has a slightly different appearance, the main components are the same and once you’ve threaded one machine you can probably thread them all. We always remind our beginners to just keep practicing; once you get the rhythm it’s just like riding a bike.

Threading a machine:

1. Find the spool holder (or spool pin) and place your spool there.

2. Bring the thread through the thread guide on top of the machine and follow the thread path down through the tension guide. The tension dial will be located nearby to allow you to adjust the tension here.

3. Bring the thread back up to the thread take-up lever and make sure it goes around the lever and is securely in the groove.

4. Follow the thread path back down to the thread guide(s) above the needle. Some machines only have one guide, others will have two here.

5. After the thread goes through the guides, thread the needle from front to back and then put the thread through the gap in the presser foot so it sits underneath the presser foot. Tip: give the end of your thread a quick snip to help make threading the needle easier.

6. Load the bobbin and make sure to leave a bit of a thread tail, approx 3 inches long.

7. While holding the needle thread tail, turn your handwheel towards yourself, one full rotation until the needle and thread take-up lever are back to their highest position. You will see the needle go down into the machine and pick up the bobbin thread.

8. When the bobbin thread comes up through the hole in the needle plate grab the bobbin thread loop and pull it up out of the hole in the plate. Now the bobbin thread will be under the presser foot as well and you are ready to test your stitches.

Any questions about threading your machine? Send us an email or pop your questions below! If you are still really stuck and prefer to learn in person, check out our Hello, Machine class here.