How to: Use a Sewing Machine!

Christmas came early this year! I caved and bought myself the Janome Sewist 500, a little christmas present to myself for being so good this year. I could not be more excited, my mind is flowing with a million different things I'd like to try to learn to sew. You are sure to see a lot of new posts about sewing in the coming months.

In high school I had a brief stint with sewing, but between sports and school, time was never on my side. After sewing one pair of pants, my dreams of sewing fell to the waste side... of course, until now!

A few months ago, I decided I wanted to learn how to sew, again. I dusted off my old sewing machine (which hardly got any use) and as soon as I attempted to sew my pattern together the machine broke. Not a good sign. Since the machine was pretty cheap and not so good to begin with I decided not to get it repaired.

Instead, I figured I'd try to take an intro sewing course, see if in fact I really liked sewing, and then buy something that would last.

I took the intro class, and really enjoyed it, although sewing in a straight line was much harder than I anticipated!

Here's what I learned...

The first step in threading your machine is to thread your bobbin; my machine luckly has a bobbin threader, if yours doesn't you'll have to wind the thread around the bobbin by hand. If you have a machine with a bobbin threader all you have to do is thread the thread through the top hole of the bobbin, leaving about 2 inches of thread at the top

Next, push the bobbin into place at the top of your machine

Wrap the thread around this screw looking thing (sorry don't know technical terms yet!)

Secure your thread on the machine

You should now have something that looks like the below

Now get ready to step gently on the petal, while holding the top two inches of thread above the bobbin (make sure you plug the petal into the side of your machine and put it on the floor first)

After you step on the petal gently for about 15 seconds your bobbin should be full

Now thread your machine by following the symbols on the machine

In order to put your bobbin correctly into the machine, you must first take off the cover, and then position your bobbin like a P, having the thread fall on the left side of the bobbin

Snap the bobbin into place

Now, wind your needle down and then up, and the thread from the bottom should come up to join the thread on your needle

Snap the cover into place; now your ready to sew your first project

Just to practice sewing in a straight line, I took out all the thread from my machine, and used a small piece of paper, I'd suggest doing this a bunch of times until you feel comfortable with your abiliites, then you can move onto fabric

Happy Sewing!