Q & A
Q: I never change my needle until it breaks, why should I do it sooner?
A: There are many reasons to change your needle often. Your stitch quality really suffers when the needle gets dull, and if you are sewing with a dull needle you will most likely get stitches that skip. All too often, customers will take the time to bring in their machine for skipping stitches and we only need to place in a new needle for that problem to be solved. A serious consequence of overusing a needle is that you can do damage to your throat plate or bobbin case, neither of which are covered by warranty. It's much cheaper to replace your needle than to have to replace a plate or bobbin case.
Q: When I take my sewing machine to class what is the best way to transport it?
A: We suggest that your put a piece of fabric under the pressure foot, drop the foot down and then bring your needle down into the fabric. This way your uptake arm cannot shake around during the trip.
Q: Why should I buy a good quality thread?
A: Unfortunately, many thread manufactures have changed how they produce their threads. If you could look at many of them under a microscope you would see that all too often they look somewhat like barbed wire, they will have very thick area and thin areas, so of coarse your stitches will look irregular and your seams will not be as strong in the thinner areas as they should be. We highly recommend Mettler threads and are confident that you will have much better results. Using high quality thread saves a lot of wear and tear on your tension disks and helps to keep your machine cleaner. We all know that we would much rather be sewing than cleaning out our bobbin cases!
Q: Why do I need to use an embroidery needle when I embroider?
A: There are two very good reasons to do so, one is the needle is sharper so when you are going thru the layers of fabric you will get much better stitching. The second is that the eye on the needle is much bigger and you will not get the breakage or shredding of the thread that you may experience when using a universal needle.
Q: When sewing an automatic embroidery design, I clip my threads after my color changes and always end up with little tails. Is there any way to get rid of them?
A: Yes the best way is to have a pair of tweezers handy, slide the tip of the tweezers under the thread and pull up on it lightly, clip the tail close to the fabric. By putting that little bit of tension on your thread with the tweezers when you clip the tail, it will snap down into the fabric... no more fuzzies!
Q: How do I prevent thread loops?
A: By having your threads come off of a vertical spool pin instead of a horizontal one, you can eliminate the kinks that sometime occur when your thread feeds off of the horizontal position
Q: How wide should I make my binding?
A: At this time, the most accepted width is 1/2 inch binding for quilts. If you are replicating or repairing antique quilts, you may want to use 3/8 inch binding as was the standard in the past.
Q: I am a new quilter and I keep coming across w.o.f., what does that mean?
A: It means width of fabric and it will appear W.O.F. also.
Q: What is binding?
A: Binding is a strip of fabric that is sewn and wrapped around the edge of the quilt. You can cut it on the straight of grain or bias grain if your project has a curve to it. The bias gives it a stretch to round corners better.
Q: Should I wash my decorator fabrics before sewing my home dec projects?
A: Do not pre-wash decorator fabrics. They are treated with a special glaze or finish that gives the fabric crispness and durability.
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