Sewing Essentials Session 3: Needles & Thread Selection

In order to do any kind of sewing, we're going to need some needles and thread. Now, thread is one thing where when you walk into the fabric store, and you see, like, aisles and aisles of all the different colors and types of thread, you may not know what you need in order to sew. And maybe some of the most fancy looking ones, or the ones that are really shiny aren't really the best ones to start out with. If you're just starting out with sewing, as a beginner sewer, you're probably going to be using some sort of cotton or an easier fabric to work with. So if you're doing that you want to start with a cotton or polyester thread. And those are what I have up here, at the top. They will say somewhere on the thread what kind of thread they are. I have here, it says it's 100% polyester. So I know I'm polyester thread. It may not be on the label. It might be on the actual spool itself. As you can see this one here, 100% cotton. So somewhere on the spool of thread it will tell you what kind of thread you have. Cotton and polyester, again, very good ones to start out with if you're just beginning to sew. They are very color fast. They're very strong, they'll hold up really well. And if you forget, do I want cotton, do I want polyester? Find something that says "all purpose thread". As this one, you can see here, says it's an all purpose thread. Now we know because these two spools are the same that it is polyester, but that means that if I'm just starting out and I have a basic sewing project, that this will probably work for that. Some of the other fun spools of thread we might see that we really want to try out might look like this. We have some rayon thread and we have some metallic thread. Rayon thread comes in all sorts of really fun colors, as does your cotton and polyester, but it has a little bit of extra shine to it. And you might think, well I really want my project to look really nice. So I'm going to pick a thread like this. Now this will hold up well in most things that you're going to sew, but if you're just starting out again I'd recommend the cotton or polyester and maybe work your way up to using some of the more decorative threads. That also goes with the metallic thread. This can actually be a little bit tricky to sew with, with as well as tricky to actually thread into the needle because it will sort of fray sometimes. And it's really rough too. So if you're going to be doing, maybe you're sewing your first garment that you really want to wear you may not want this rough metallic thread up near your skin. So this is something that if you're going to maybe try out some decorative work at the end, maybe you want to add a little embellishment. You can try out some metallic thread, but get a little more comfortable with your sewing machine and with sewing first, before you come into the more complicated threads. As you'll notice with all of our different thread spools here, they all look a little bit different. We have really skinny spools of thread and we have much larger spools of thread, and obviously one holds more thread than the other. So if I'm going to do a very large project and I know I'm going to be using a lot of thread, I may want to buy a larger spool. Most spools of thread will have some way to keep the spool from unraveling when you're not using it. In this case, you can see sort of this little indentation on the bottom edge of our spool. And that is where I can wrap my thread around. You can sort of hear it getting caught in that little indentation. And I know that I could just either throw this in my sewing bag, or maybe put it in a drawer and that's not going to come unraveled. It might also look something like this. It might be a little bit harder to see, but we still have just that little indentation. You can see, I have my thread wrapped into it. So I know it's going to be nice and secure. And it might be something like on these ones where you can't really see an indentation but it's because the actual spool pops down. I can wrap my thread into the little indentation here and then actually pop that bottom back in place, and that's going to hold my thread nice and secure. So once you start doing a lot of sewing maybe your very first project, you just have one spool of white thread and that's all you have. Well, as you start sewing more and you're using a lot of different colors and different types, you're probably going to have a lot of thread in your sewing room. So you want to make sure that you are securing the ends of your threads, so it doesn't become just one jumbled mess. Also, when you're storing your thread, I might recommend grouping them together. So maybe I'm gonna put all of my polyester threads together, all of my cotton threads together, because sometimes these little labels can actually pull off like so. Well and then, if I don't have my label on there, I don't know what kind of thread I have. But if it's in with the rest of my polyester or cotton thread, then I know what it is. And I don't have to worry about using a thread that I might not want to. So if your labels come off, no big deal. Just sort of keep everything grouped together in one place. So that's thread. Now I'm going to pull in a bunch of needles. There are so many different types of needles out there and you might think, well, they all kind of look the same to me. I'm just going to pick one. Well, when it comes down to picking your needles needles really do help make what you're sewing a lot easier. Again, if you're just starting out or you're doing a beginner project, maybe using cotton or a very easy to work with fabric, you can go ahead and use universal needles. Your machine, like I showed you, comes with that little bag and it had a couple of needles in there. Those are just universal needles. So if you break them or they're dull and you need more, you can go purchase universal needles. Universal needles come in different sizes, from a lightweight thinner needle to a heavier weight thicker needle. You can buy universal needles in a pack of either all the same size, or you can get one that is assorted sizes. And the assorted sizes will in some way be color-coded as to whether they're the lightweight or medium or heavyweight needles. Somewhere on that package, in this case, it's on the back, and it's in really, really thin writing, it'll be somewhere on the back of your package, it'll tell you what color of needle goes with what weight of needle, and what fabric it should be used with. So these are, if you're not sure, just look at the front. Look at what colors you have, and then compare those colors to what it says on the back. And it'll tell you what fabric to use that needle with. So when I first started out sewing, this is the only kind of needle I bought, was the universal assorted needles. And I found that that worked for most things that I sewed for the first few years when I was first getting into sewing. Now there are other specialty needles depending on different types of fabric you might be sewing. And a lot of them will just be clearly labeled as to what they're used for. We have leather needles that are just going to be used for leather or pleather or something heavier like that. We also have denim needles which are also used for denim or much heavier fabrics, or if you have multiple layers of fabrics. These are just very, very thick, very sturdy needles. Moving down, we have some needles that work with stretchy fabrics. They can be called either stretch needles, ballpoint needles, or jersey needles. Again, they come in different sizes and they will be listed on your package, but you'll want to sew with some sort of stretch or jersey needle if you're sewing with some stretch fabrics. Now, when you're sewing with a regular needle, your needle is just going to go down into the fabric. Maybe it will go between the actual fibers of the fabric. Maybe it'll pierce through it. It sort of just goes wherever the needle is going. But with a ballpoint, when you're sewing with that, it'll actually go between the fibers of the fabric and won't cause any runs or tears in your fabric. So definitely want to make sure your needle you're using goes with the fabric you're using. Twin needles. I showed you a twin needle that will come standard with your machine, but you can also buy other ones, because they do come in different sizes. I have a very thin twin needle here, you can see two millimeters, and I have an extra wide twin needle here at six millimeters, and you can find them, and any millimeter in between there as well, and that's just the distance between the two needles that make up the twin needle. So you can buy different ones of those. And then there are some other specialty needles. So we have embroidery needles, and this helps when you're doing embroidery. Now, if you have your basic machine and your machine does some sort of monogram stitch, and you're just going to maybe put, you know, your initials on something. You don't necessarily have to have an embroidery needle just to do that. If you're going to do, you know, full-scale embroidery or maybe a large patch you want to make on something, that's when you would switch to your embroidery needle. Then as we talked about before, this trickier thread, this metallic thread, actually does have its own special needle that helps when sewing with it. And it has a larger eye on the needle which is the opening where your thread is going through. And this helps because metallic thread, again, it's really rough and has a rough surface to it that if you try putting it through a very small eye of the needle, as it gets pulled through the needle, you might find that it actually starts to ball up, or little parts of your thread, see, like this, it'll start to pull apart. And maybe only one section will continue going through the eye of the needle. And then all the fancy metallic parts sort of start balling up like this behind your needle because you don't have the extra large eye that you need which is why you would need the metallic needle. So if you're sewing with, with really any kind of thread and you find that you're really having problems, whether that means your thread is breaking, or your thread is balling up, or you're just not getting the stitch quality you want, take a look at what you're sewing, what thread you're using, and maybe find the needle that goes with your project. I mean, there are so many out there that there's definitely a needle that specifically fits with what it is you're sewing. So again, for the purpose of this class being a beginner sewing class, a basic sewing class, start with your universal needles and your all purpose or cotton and polyester thread. And once you've got that, we're actually going to get some fabric. We're going to start cutting our fabric. So I'll get all of that set up and be right back.