How to Use a Sewing Machine for Beginners

If you are passionate enough to evolve your career as a successful fashionista then the first and the foremost thing that you must do is to have a sound knowledge on how to use a sewing machine for beginners. To be straightforward, it is going to be the fuel of your entire career journey.

Being concerned about your spectrum career and well-wisher of you, today we have come up with a complete beginner-friendly guideline that narrates how to to use a sewing machine appropriately. Stick to us till the end and practice our guideline rigorously to topple the beginner level very soon.

Guide: How to Use a Sewing Machine for Beginners

As a beginner, you cannot just sit and start sewing with the sewing machine. Instead, you are to be familiar with several sewing machine parts and versed in a number of pre-sewing tasks. Hence, a complete exploration of both of these follows below with clear clarification for you.

The parts of a sewing machine

Power switch: At first, there is power switch that you will use for switching the machine on/off. You can usually find it on the side of a machine.
Light: An LED light must be closer to the needle zone. If you find your room-light to be less bright, you can use it to sew and observe the stitches with more relaxation.
Foot pedal: It is the accelerator and always found at the lowest point. You can use it to control the speed of presser feet and needle.
Buttons for stitch length and width: You will usually have these buttons available on the front or top of your sewing machine. Using these, you can regulate the stitch length and width according to the requirement.
Feet: Try to find out how many feet are there in your machine and what are the uses of those. Generally, the modern sewing machine includes 4 to 6 feet.
Tension wheels: Like the length and width buttons, these wheels are also available either on the front or on the top of your machine. Use these to have even and smoother stitches without any loop.
Needle and screw: You cannot but be acquainted with the small screw, which doesn’t let the needle to be misplaced.
Bobbin tension screw: Usually, the screws are found on the bobbin case in a front-loading machine.
Lid: Also, be introduced to the lid that uncovers the bobbin and bobbin case.
Oiling points: Don’t squirt oil here and there rather be sure which the oiling point is. Moreover, some ultra-modern machine doesn’t need oiling. So, be aware of this meticulously.

Pre-sewing tasks

After being acquainted with the parts of your sewing machine and learning the usage of those in the proper way, you are to be an expert in the following pre-sewing tasks, which will define your quality of sewing.

Bobbin threading

Imitate the following steps to thread the bobbin:

Step 1: Drag out a 0.5 inch tail of the thread from the bobbin
Step 2: Lift the small lever adjacent to the central pin to withdraw the bobbin case.
Step 3: Take the case by your left-hand and the filled bobbin by the other hand. Attach the two but make sure that the thread tail is sufficiently pulled out.
Step 4: Maneuver the tail via the little slit. Keep doing it under and via the tensioning clasp.
Step 5:Aline and push the case back into its chamber and wait until a firm ‘click’ sound is heard.
Step 6: Holding the top spool-thread with left-hand turn the ‘balance wheel’ to you for letting the needle complete a revolution. In this way, the top thread can pick up the lower part thread.
Step 7: Now tug on the top-thread gently resulting in the pulling out of the loop of the bottom-thread from within the two feed dogs.
Step 8: Smug the finishing point of the bottom-thread out using a pin or something like it.
Step 9: Finally, close the bobbin chamber cover.

Needle threading

Almost all of the modern sewing machines include automatic needle threading facility where you just need to touch a lever. But, if unfortunately your machine doesn’t have this feature, you can do it manually following these steps.

Step 1: Make sure that your hands are sufficiently dry and pass the thread around the upper tread-guide.
Step 2: Loop the thread down and pass it via the U-shaped guide.
Step 3: Keep pulling it around the take-up lever. But, before it make sure that you have placed the lever to the highest level.
Step 4: Now, tug the thread down to the needle zone.
Step 5: Feed it through the final thread guide/s.
Step 6: Finally, it is time to get the needle threaded.

Stitch selection

Like the automatic needle threading feature, the modern sewing machines offer convenient stitch selection feature as well with printed chart, an LCD screen and buttons. You can go through the chart on the front of the machine to choose the needle and lock it using the screen and buttons.

Stitching a sample

Never dive into serious stitching just after learning the above-discussed points rather make an experiment with some random materials.

Step 1: At first, place your sample material under the presser foot.
Step 2: Lower the presser foot.
Step 3: Keep the threads hold for a number of initial stitches
Step 4: After completing a few stitches, use the reverse button to stitch backward. This will strengthen the starting point of the stitches.
Step 5: Let go the reverse stitch.
Step 6: Keep stitching forward and when you reach at the end don’t forget repeating the backstitching.

Final words

So, this is how as a beginner you can use a sewing machine appropriately. We strongly forbid you to consider any one segment lightly as even a minor ignorance can bring about serious futility in your career. Moreover, as a passionate beginner you must be more careful while dealing with needle and bobbin.