Embroidery: Know your Tools

The cold weather has arrived here in Chania, several weeks earlier than normal. Watching the coats of my fur babies become thick and lush during late summer, I knew we would have an early winter. When I pay attention, it’s easy for me to pick up on things like this.

We first arrived in Crete three years ago, also in the Fall. The days were warm and the nights cool. We had no idea if this was normal or not. This is our third year here, which now gives us enough information to judge the weather patterns.

When I got my first embroidery machine I had no idea what to expect. What was normal. What was abnormal. The embroidery stitching didn’t sound like normal sewing machine noises, but that is all I had to judge by. As the years have gone by, and I’m now using my third embroidery machine, I have learned to recognize normalcy or problems from the sounds I hear or from any number of visual clues.

While it’s easy to spot problems when we watch every stitch form, as new machine embroiderers are known to do, it’s more important to be able to pick up on audible clues. Whether it is the machine, the hoop, the needle or any number of other variables with your machine embroidery, there are so many noises to get used to. I have three machines, and each of them makes its own combination of sounds. What may be a perfectly normal sound on one machine is a sound of impending disaster on another machine. Learning the differences saves me lots of headaches! Still, there are certain sounds that are the same, regardless of machine.

First, if I can hear the needle as it punches through my fabric and stabilizer, it is time for a new needle. Dull needles cause more problems when stitching embroidery designs than anything else. Dull needles can break thread, put unwanted tears in your fabric, and make proper stitch placement impossible. Of all embroidery supplies, needles are the least expensive. Change them often!

Next, I can actually hear my thread moving through the machine. It’s not a loud noise or one that I even think about on the surface. Instead, it is one of those background noises that I don’t notice unless something goes wrong. Most often, if it sounds wrong, I’ve put the spool on wrong or some such simple thing. If the thread catches on something, though, it can be a huge mess to fix.

The sound I listen for the most is for my bobbin. Yes, I can hear that, too! A full bobbin makes a full whirring noise in the machine. As the bobbin gets used, the sound changes slightly. When the bobbin is almost empty, it makes a very distinctive sound somewhat like a spinning or sliding noise. My machines usually alert me to low bobbins, but not always. My big machine has a tendency to start winding thread from the top onto the bobbin whenever it gets too low. Since this is not a function of my machine, this is a huge problem that destroys whatever project is in the hoop and requires an intense cleaning before I can get back to my embroidery. I have learned to rely on my ears instead of the low bobbin warning on my machine!

Take some time to hear the song that your machine sings, and you’ll always know which way the wind blows!

About the Author

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Author (embroideryopw). Submitted on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 Time: 6:31 AM

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