red felt discs?

On my Singers, they are brown. They go onto the thread holder, it helps keeps the spool from rattling as it turns.

Spool pin felts they are. They keep the spool from spinning wildly on the pin.

Yoda? ;-)

On your spool pins placed they must be.

Lizzy

ROTFLOL! By George, I think she's got it!

The Force is strong with her.

Just put the felt disks on the spool spindle before you put the thread spool on. The felt keeps the spools from spinning around and getting the loose thread tangled, which is what will happen with the plastic spools if you don't use the felt disks. Barbara in SC

They go under the spool, on the spool pin. They help keep the spool from spinning wildly and backlashing thread under and around the spool pin (a problem that's often difficult to spot when your machine suddenly doesn't sew right) and it helps keep the spools from chewing up the paint or plastic on the machine.

The cats steal the ones off my old Singer, so I substitute a "doily" cut out of a bit of knit. For some reason, those are less interesting.

Kay

Some people on TreadleOn have made tatted ones. I covet one or two, but not enough to learn to tat. ;-)

Ah.............thank you all. I kinda though t that might be it, but didn't know why.

Now - if only I can learn the secret to avoid a bobbin runout or a breaking top thread............. : ))

There is no secret of knowing when the bobbin thread runs out that I know, with one exception, that is start each project with a newly filled bobbin, which is almost impossible to do unless you have an endless supply of bobbins. I say this because I have been an active sewist for over 70-years.

There are several reasons for the upper thread breaking, such as: Wrong size needle for the fabric; Wrong thread for the fabric; Needle &/or machine threaded wrong; Bobbin not set correctly in the machine, or put in backwards. Old thread; Incorrect needle tension; or Possibly incorrect bobbin tension, though that is not often the case.

Emily

[I would love to tat, like my DGM, who did gorgeous work.] But back to the felt discs, I use small squares of felt or scraps, cut small circles or squares and use a hole punch to make a hole in the center.

Emily

If you get in the habit of looking at your bobbin before/after every (XX) seams (you'll discover what works for you and your machine), you'll mostly avoid running out of bobbin thread. Also keep an eye on the seam behind the needle, if the bobbin thread runs out the top thread isn't catching and you should be able to spot it before sewing another mile or so. ;-)

What are the circumstances when your top thread breaks? That can be caused by a variety of issues, such as incorrect tension, damaged or incorrectly inserted needle, etc.

I think I once asked (maybe in this group, but I dunno) just how many layers of thread are on a fresh spool of thread. I thought if I knew that, I'd lay on half that many layers onto the bobbin. Divvying up the thread half and half, so to speak. But no one knew.

I am not about to unwind a whole fresh spool to find out. But if I had a huge project, it MIGHT be worth the time to find out.

I usually notice it well before the mile. It invariably happens when I am down to the last foot to sew. Murphy's law of sewing?

By the way, I notice that this poor group is really spam loaded - and I thought my regular groups were bad. Sorry to see this, ladies. One group was so overrun, we set up a members only yahoo group and all has been friendly and informative ever since.

I doubt most home sewing machine are capable of holding half the thread on a spool, even a small spool. You might want to wind several bobbins of the thread to have them ready, but I usually just wind a new bobbin when I run out. I have eighty bobbins and usually keep multiples of white and black, the other colors are on single bobbins.

That depends on what newsgroup server you use. I see just a very occasional spam using news.eternal-september.org, they are very good about catching and deleting spam.

I am not fond of anything yahoo or google, nor do I like moderated newsgroups. YMMV.

By the way, we are not all ladies here there are quite a few male sewist as well.

On my machine, I have found that I can get approx. 50m of thread on a bobbin, so using a 100m reel to start with, that gives me 1/2 on each - which is quite handy. It does vary from machine to machine with differing thickness's of thread also playing a part in the equation.

My machine has a clear bobbin cover and clear bobbins, so you can peer in and see how much is left. This is very useful, but does not always prevent not noticing the end of the bobbin and sewing 1/2 a mile past the end of the bobbin thread leading to much cursing and swearing!

Sarah

eternal-september and a good kill file keep things nice and neat for me. Very little junk gets through. Juno