Bobbin Storage & Transfer

There are many different types and styles of bobbins available on the market today, and depending on the type of machine you have, can depend on the type of bobbin that you need to buy. A lot of times people don't know exactly what type of bobbin their machine takes right off the top of their head, especially if they go to the store and they realize oh, I need to buy some more bobbins, but I don't have my machine manual to consult, or I don't remember exactly the make and model of my machine. So if you accidentally buy the wrong bobbins you can still use them. And I'm gonna show you how you can transfer thread off of one bobbin onto another. So I have a couple bags of bobbins here. One that I knew was definitely gonna be a little bit too big for my machine, it just looked a little bit too big, but then this one here, to me I was like that looks like the exact size that I need. So this is an M-size bobbin, and this is an L. And actually my machine takes neither. So this is what an M-size bobbin looks like. It's much larger in diameter than a normal bobbin and this is genuinely for a long arm quilting machine. And this is an L-size bobbin and this is more of the standard size that fits into most home sewing machines or conventional machines. So the problem with this one was not the diameter size, but how tall it was. So this is the bobbin that I thought was going to fit in my machine when I got these bobbins and it doesn't. This is the actual bobbin that my machine takes. So if you can tell, this one almost fits down inside of here. It's not high enough. And you might think that that's just a very very small minute difference, but that small amount can cause some major issues in your stitching. You can have all sorts of jumbled up stitching on the bottom underside of your fabric. You can cause skip stitches, thread nest, all sorts of problems, so having the right size of bobbin is definitely important. But if you run into this and you grab the bag of bobbins and you still wanna use them, you can definitely do that. So this again is that larger M-size bobbin. And what I wanna do is take the thread off of it and put it onto one of these J-size bobbins that actually does fit my machine. So this little handy fella here is called the Sidewinder. This is just the one that my local fabric store carries, there are other ones out there, but it is a standalone bobbin winder. Meaning you don't have to have your sewing machine to use it, you can use it just by itself. So if you've got some spare time, or I like to do this when I'm just sitting and watching TV at night, is I'm just going to transfer bobbins. So I'm going to pretend that this larger bobbin is my spool of thread. I'm gonna place that where the spool of thread would go. And then if your bobbin winder is a little bit different, it might have a slightly different thread path, but generally there will be some sort of arrows or numbers or marks of some sort to let you know how to thread your thread through your bobbin winder. So on here I've gone through a little guide here, wrapped it around my tension wheel, and now I'm going to again follow my arrow down over here which tells me that it's coming down towards where my new bobbin is gonna be. Place that on there. Bring my thread around. Now I like to take and wrap my thread several times around the bobbin by hand first just because I want it to be nice and secure as a starting place. I do this whether I'm using my standalone bobbin or when I'm using my machine as well. This little feature here is the guide and the stopper for this automatic bobbin winding. So when I have this engaged here all the way down, there's no thread on the bobbin, and as this bobbin fills up this is going to move further and further out as the thread fills up on this bobbin. And when it clicks all the way over it's going to stop. So I need it in place against the bobbin first. And then I just hit our little start button. And it just keeps winding the bobbin. It's going to keep going until the bobbin is completely wound. If you find that your bobbin up here or down here is moving around too much, if you find it shaking back and forth, you can just lightly place your finger anywhere along there to add some extra support. Then you can either wait until this automatically stops, or if you feel like your bobbin is as full as you'd like it to be, you can just rock this back and stop it. Or if your bobbin winder's a little bit different, stop it however your bobbin winder stops. Then I can take this one off. It's a perfectly wound bobbin. Go ahead and cut this thread. And I still have plenty of thread still on this bobbin that I can continue to wind more bobbins. So this is a case of empty bobbins that I bought. And it holds 12 bobbins, so there's three of them in each of these little sections. And one of these large M-size bobbins will wind three bobbins for my machine. So like I said, if you bought these bobbins or you have a bag of them and they don't fit your machine, that's still a lot of thread and a lot of bobbins that you can wind off of them that you don't want to waste. So if you're going to do this, if you're gonna spend some time and transfer all these bobbins over, you're going to have a lot of bobbins that you need to store somewhere. On some of these bobbin winders they have bobbin storage, see these go right here, but this doesn't hold very many. I can hold four at the most. So that's not necessarily that many bobbins. So while you can store some inside your bobbin winder, there are definitely some extra bobbin storage methods that you might wanna use. So like I mentioned, this was a little case that I bought that actually came with the bobbins. So it was filled with all of the empty bobbins and I've just been working my way through winding them. So this is a good way, if you're going to buy extra bobbins you might as well buy bobbins that come with a storage container already. Or here's another option for bobbin storage. It's similar to this one in that it's a plastic case that just opens up. But rather than having three bobbins together in each section, there are individual sections for each of the bobbins. And then also an extra little section along here where you can store maybe a seam ripper or just some other sewing tool. Another storage option that's similar to these, if you can't find maybe a bobbin storage, or maybe these are a little bit more expensive than what you want to buy, you can actually use things outside of the sewing room to store bobbins as well. So this is actually an ice cube container that has a little lid on it. And you can open it up one side or both sides. And you can place bobbins in this as well. I may not store bobbins that I've already wound in this one, but if I buy an empty bag of bobbins that I'm going to wind, I might definitely throw these in here 'cause they might tend to get a little bit jumbled in here. All three of these bobbin storage methods are great for storing your bobbins if they're going to be sitting on a shelf or sitting in your sewing room at your sewing space, but not necessarily the best for if you're going to travel. What I mean by that is so I actually traveled here to where I'm at today to do this video for you and when I got here and open this case all of these bobbins were all jumbled up because it gets shaken around. This isn't maybe the best or most secure closure method, so if you're going to take your bobbins traveling with you, whether that's in a car, on a plane, however you're doing your traveling, you want to have some kind of bobbin storage that holds your bobbins a little bit tighter. So that's usually in the form of some kind of silicone based storage. So there's these really fun rings here. And with these you just take your bobbin and you can see it acts like it's not gonna fit, but all you have to do is push it down in there and it fits perfectly. And what it's gonna do is it's going to hold your bobbins so that they don't spin, they don't move. Let me grab another one here that has some thread on it. Any of them that have thread already wound on them when you press it down into your bobbin storage, you know it's gonna hold it nice and secure. These also hold quite a few bobbins as you go around your little circle. And if this tips upside down, thrown in your sewing bag, these aren't gonna come loose. So this is a much more secure option if you're going to be taking your bobbins traveling with you. Another one that you can get which you can find this at many craft stores also, again it's meant to be bobbin storage, so these are pre-cut little rectangles that are the perfect size for bobbins, and this is a foam insert. Same as pressing your bobbin down into the silicone ring, you just take and press your bobbin down into this foam. And not only will this hold your bobbins nice and secure, these aren't gonna come out either, it has a nice closure to it. And none of your bobbins are gonna get jumbled up or come unwound if you travel. So if you're going to spend all this time transferring your bobbins over to the bobbin size that fits your machine, you definitely wanna have a way to store them. Don't put them back in a bag like this. Make sure you have some sort of storage method to keep them all separate. And if you're gonna take those bobbins traveling definitely have some sort of method that holds your bobbins secure so nothing comes unwound.