What to do when the bobbin runs out in the middle of a seam?

Yes, but much of my customer sewing is silk, for which I need silk thread... I've only ever seen those bobbins in polyester.

It takes very little time for me to fill a few bobbins, and I keep about

100 on hand for the HV machine. The HV bobbins are fairly roomy, too.

I never see what the fuss is with filling bobbins: I just do a whole pile at the start of the project.

I'm still thread hunting for my latest: got a lead on 1000m cops of silk thread: almost cheap enough to consider for the serger! :) Certainly a good move for silk rolled edges, if not neatening, and for the needle threads if not the loopers...

No, no, no, Kate! You do not "need" to sew silk with silk thread! It's totally unnecessary to use anything but high quality polyester or poly/cotton thread for silk, except for topstitching!

In fact, the thread manufacturers themselves will tell you this. I can understand using it for rolled edges, or for hand sewing, but not for seams.

I've been teaching a class on sewing with wool, and almost every single class someone asks if they have to use silk thread to sew wool. No wonder they're so afraid to sew with what I consider the easiest of all fabrics to sew!!

Karen Maslowski in Cincinnati

Kate Dicey wrote:

I know it's not strictly necessary, but I prefer it. Remember, most of these garments are special occasion, luxury, occasional use items, not fling in the wash and use every day silks! :) I LOVE machine sewing with high quality 100 weight silk thread like Kinkame or the YLI stuff: it looks so good, and just melts into the seams, especially on fine chiffons and crepe de chines. It also means that the seams behave the same way as the fabric in cleaning, and are less likely to fade to a different colour.

I also love it for hand stitching, hems, buttonholes... If I cannot get silk, rayon or poly machine embroidery thread works well for these purposes, but I wouldn't use them for seams.

I usually sew wool with good quality cotton thread. Wools just behaves beautifully when sewing... But one of the nicest fabrics I've ever sewn was a wool and cashmere mix. Yummmm! Now I did sew that with silk thread...

Don't you love to sew with such wonderful fabrics? It's such a sensual experience, something that is hard to communicate to those who have not had the pleasure. :)

Karen Maslowski in Cincinnati

Kate Dicey wrote:

Yes - and I love cutting it too... That first deep cut into silk at £50 a metre... :) :) :)

Some things that no one mentioned:

(1) Always have a supply of empty bobbins so you have enough to wind multiples of the same thread. The first thing I did when I got my new machine was buy 50 bobbins for it.

(2) Consider a machine with a bobbin sensor so you can have a look at it before you commence sewing. I just loved the sensor on the Bernina

1630. It would flash off and on and was hard to miss. The one on my Bernie 200A is a sound.... and I don't like it.

(3) Most times you can just line up the needle perfectly with the previous line of stitching, backstitch one or two and continue. But for topstitching that must be perfect this is what I do--- a technique I learnt from doing machine Sashiko: If necessary, pick out enough of the stitching so that you have a bobbin thread that is 3" long. Then thread the top thread in a regular needle and push it through an existing hole to the other side. Tie off the ends on the wrong side in a square knot. Then, making sure that you start with at least 3" tails, line up your needle so that it will be in exactly the last hole of the last stitch made by the machine needle and continue your stitching without backstitching. When you are done, go back to the place where you continued and push the top thread to the wrong side and tie it off in a square knot. This may sound like a hassle but it really does not take much time at all. And the advantage is that you get a perfect line of stitching. But I'd only do that where the top-stitching will really show.

Phae

To take Phae's tip one step further: Borrow a variation of the technique quilters use. After tying the square knot--or an overhand knot, which may be a little quicker--thread both ends in a needle, poke it in the hole the threads came out of (still working on the wrong side) and run the needle an inch or so between the fabric layers. Bring the needle out of the fabric and tug on the thread ends until the knot pops into the hole. Clip the thread ends. Presto, no visible knot on either side, and no evidence that the line of stitching was broken.

I keep a #7 Darner needle handy for this. #7s have a long eye, making it relatively easy to pass two threads through at once, and they are just thick enough make a hole that the knot can be popped through with very little effort.

Doreen in Alabama

On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 20:40:02 -0400, Karen Maslowski wrote (in message ):

Just what I was going to say! I always check my bobbin before beginning topstitching, etc. If I'm doubtfull that I have enough, I pop in a new bobbin. Oh and I always keep an extra bobbin wound - both to save the frustration of doing it in mid-seam and to make it a tad easier to get thread for anything I want to do by hand during construction.

On Mon, 1 May 2006 9:17:11 -0400, Kate Dicey wrote (in message ):

Oh, I've done so little sewing with silk, mostly just my wedding dress. But this paragraph has me longing to run out and splurge on some silk and start soemthing! Good thing for our budget that no silk is available anywhere nearby. LOL

Quite a *lot* longer, as you'll discover if you do any extensive hand sewing.

Thread lengths are finite. Sometimes it catches me by surprise, sometimes I see it coming. No big deal.

Factories deal with it by serging everything, and taking the thread off huge cones hung point-down over the machines.

(Well, they were point down in the only factory I ever entered, very briefly over twenty years ago. What struck me most strongly at the time was that there were rows and rows of little old Amish women in caps and gowns -- making cheerleader costumes. That, and I wanted the scraps of the brilliant satins!)

Joy Beeson

Which is fine and dandy for embroidery, but seams hold better when the top and bottom threads match.

Which reminds me that I have a box of pre-wound bobbins that I bought just because nylon thread is hard to find and I might want to sew nylon someday -- I think I actually could put one of these things in my bobbin case, if I used about a sixteenth of an inch off the outside first. But it's much thinner than my bobbins are; it might get sideways in the case. Better, I think, to re-wind it onto my regular bobbin -- the label on the box says "63 yards per HemBob", but comparing the volumes suggests that it would fit with room to spare even when fluffed up by the re-winding.

"HemBobs(R)" suggests to me that they were meant for a hemming machine. It's just a pancake of thread, without any protection from friction, which suggests that that machine doesn't spin the bobbin in the case the way mine does.

(What do we call those cops of thread that are wound free-standing like cones, but are little cylinders?)

------------------

Fifty bobbins (mentioned elsewhere as a minimum number) seems like a lot of bobbins to me. I count only ten empty bobbins in my box. Of course, there are at least half a dozen more clipped to, bagged with, or tied to various spools of thread, two almost-empty bobbins, one bobbin double-wound to use for easing and temporary overcasting, one filled with basting thread from the cone over the machine, five filled with DMC Cordonnette in three sizes and two colors, and four filled with unidentified thread to be used up in basting. And I forgot that there are six in the box of silk thread.

Maybe fifty isn't such a large number after all. But I no longer fill bobbins ahead of time, not even the DMC thread that comes on balls -- I used to try to wind a whole ball onto bobbins when I wound a spool. (I have some old wooden spools intended to hold 500 yards; even with hand-drill winding, I can get a 472-yd ball onto one spool. (I think; it's been a looong time since I did it; even when it's your default thread, 472 yards is a lot of thread.) )

My machine bobbins hold about forty yards of #50/3 cotton, or so it said in the manual, and I have space left over when I wind a hundred-yard spool of machine twist onto a bobbin.

Joy Beeson

Ammon's daughters in a factory with machines and cheerleader outfits.... isn't that interesting. Perhaps they were Mennonite? Go figure!

Absolutely. Prewound bobbins are filled with extra fine thread, aren't they? My machines won't take prewound bobbins... ok the Janome will but not Berninas. Regardless, I never buy them. [...]

Yes I'm the one who said 50. I guess it depends how much one is sewing. My new machine isn't yet 2 months old but I've already filled over 25 bobbins for projects I've done. I've been a busy little bee lately I guess lol. For several of those projects I used contrasting threads to embellish.

Joy Beeson

I'll see you, and raise you:

Beverly

And I'll chip in with Henry Bertrand in London:

On Tue, 2 May 2006 14:52:39 -0400, Phaedrine wrote (in message ):

We live in a part of Michigan that has lots of Amish and Mennonites. There are several Amish-owned businesses. We've been told by their owners that they are allowed to use some modern things in their businesses that are not allowed in their homes - such as telephones, credit card machines, electric lighting, etc. In fact, there's an Amish-owned hardware store in the area that sells many things not permitted in Amish homes - but also sells many quality hand tools that have been replaced by power tools elsewhere.

So, I figure the women might be allowed to use electric machines to sew cheerleader outfits at work, as long as both are left AT WORK.