Prevent Thread Breaks and Tangles

Hand sewing is not particularly one of my favorite things to do in life. And it becomes even more so when my thread tangles or it breaks when I'm in the middle of sewing a hem, sewing on a button, whatever. It just drives me nuts. So I'd like to show you today some products that will keep your thread from tangling, breaking and even knotting. The first one., and it's probably my favorite for hand sewing, is good old fashioned beeswax. You can find it in the notions department of any sewing store. And as it wears out, as you can see I've used this a lot, you can rotate it in your little case and there are slots on the case. And what you do is after you've threaded your needle, I kind of hold onto the base just to get it started, and you run it through your beeswax, run it through a couple of times. And what it's doing is it's coating the thread and making it very, very strong and also straightening out any problems. And when you get ready to sew, you can see that it's staying very straight and it also has that coating. You can see a little bit on my fingers there, that is on the thread itself and it will help it glide easier through your fabric. So that is the beeswax. The next product is one called Thread Heaven. It's a known as a thread conditioner. Comes in a little blue case. You can see, I like this one too. And I take my threaded needle and I just hold it down at one end and then just run my thread through so that it gets coated. And do it several times like we did before with the beeswax. There you go. So that's the Thread Heaven. The next one, if you run out of Thread Heaven, or if your store doesn't have it, you can always use good old fashion chapstick. I wouldn't use one of the flavored or colored ones. Just use a clear one. And simply once again, hold onto the thread, run it past, oops, pass the chapstick. And you may break it a little bit. That's probably because I'm holding the thread too tight. Oops, run it through till it coats the thread, and you'll have the same effect going through your fabric. It keeps it straight. And it also glides through the fabric very, very easily. Now, while you're sewing on your machine, there are two products that I like. The first is Sewers Aid. You can use this for hand selling also. It's primarily though I use it for machine sewing because what you're going to do is open it up, and you just run a single line down your thread, just run it down your thread. And then as your thread rolls off, it will have the coating on there. And you can do several lines if you want. But this one works very, very good for your machine and also for the hand sewing. And the final product I want to show you is a silicone spray. This particular one is by Sullivans. I use it a lot when I'm quilting on the long arm machine. And if you spray it on top of the fabric, it doesn't leave a residue but it helps the needle go through easier. And it's particularly wonderful when you're quilting on batiks, because batiks are very hard to get the needle through a lot of times. So even if you're doing it by hand, or if you are running your quilt through a domestic machine, I would recommend spraying the top very lightly with the silicone spray. And if the back is also a batik, go ahead and spray it on there. The silicone spray is also wonderful for your thread. A lot of times, as thread gets older it breaks. One trick is to put it in the freezer for a few hours. Sometimes that will help. But the other one I find is very quick and easy is just to do a quick spray with the silicone spray. And usually I'll spray the entire spool because of doing the long arm quilting. And you can feel it as the thread comes off, it's got that silky smoothness to it and it does keep it from breaking and tangling. So these are the products that I like best. The beeswax, the Thread Heaven, the chapstick, Sewer's Aid, and also the Sullivans silicone spray. So give them a try and see if your hand sewing and your machine sewing doesn't go much easier.