So you want to learn to sew? Well, do you have a machine?
If you have a machine, great! If you don’t, go to my select a machine post and figure out what works best for you. If that’s not enough, ping me and we’ll set something up.
First things first, oil your machine if your machine needs to be oiled — it’ll tell you that in the manual, but if it’s a pre-1963 machine, yes it will need oil; if it’s 1963 to 2000, maybe, if it’s newer than 2000, it probably doesn’t.
Now, is it threaded? If it is, remove the thread. If it isn’t, don’t thread it. Does it have a needle? If it doesn’t, install a needle (see the manual for the specific way). Set the stitch selector for about 12 stitches to the inch. (A warning: some very modern machines with thread sensors hate this exercise and will not permit you to do it. If so, it’s okay to have the machine threaded, just make sure you’ve got it threaded properly, and use two different strong-colored threads [red and light blue or green and orange, fr’ex] so you can make sure the stitches are forming correctly).
I recommend these next exercises even if you know how to sew but this is a new to you machine, because it will give you muscle memory calibration for that machine very quickly. But also, they’re good learning exercises, too.
Using a piece of lined notebook paper, draw a line down the right-hand side to mirror the red margin line on the left, and put the sheet of paper under the foot, with the needle where the top blue line meets the left red margin line. Sew on the top blue line to the line you drew, leave the needle down, raise the presser foot, turn the paper, lower the presser foot, sew down to the next blue line, raise and lower the presser foot and turn the paper again, and sew back to the left margin line. Repeat going across each blue line, keeping the needle on the line.
This is learning to sew a straight line. Repeat until you feel comfortable sewing a straight line, until you relax and learn that the machine will pull the paper forward, in a straight line, and your job is not to push or pull the paper, but to guide it. This is also how you learn if your feed dogs (the little serrated thingies under the presser foot) are functioning correctly — if your machine is new or newly serviced and it CANNOT pull the paper on a straight line with only a minimal pressure from you to keep the paper straight, take it back to where you got it (or don’t buy it if you’re still in the shop). The feed dogs need to be fixed.
If it’s a used machine that wasn’t serviced and you bought it without knowing its condition, either 1) take it to a shop to be fully serviced, or 2) put sewing with it on hold and learn to be a sewing machine tinkerer. I recommend Andy Tube’s YouTube series and Vintage Sewing Machine Garage. If it’s a used, all metal vintage or antique machine and the shop won’t service it, take it to another shop, because that shop isn’t in the business of service, they’re in the business of SELLING NEW MACHINES. (And not only are they being bastards, they’re being lazy, because vintage machines are the easiest service they will have all week, and most have a wealth of spare parts around.)
In general, the narrow feed dogs of a straight stitch machine will pull more straight and with more precision, and can turn tighter corners than a zigzag machine. A zig zag machine is more prone to slop because the feed dogs must be wider, and the stitch it forms is actually a very narrow (less than .1 mm wide) zig-zag, not the perfectly straight line the way a straight stitch machine sews. It’s fine, and most people will never notice the difference, but it’s also a point of troubleshooting you don’t want to miss.
If you and your machine managed straight lines fine, now it’s time to either get a young child’s coloring book or print out coloring sheets for young children. This is not adult coloring book time, because you want large shapes and bold lines, not fine, detailed shapes. This time, follow the lines of the coloring figure, turning the paper and raising and lowering the foot at corners. Sewing curves is harder, and it will probably take you a couple or several sheets to get really comfortable and know when to slow down. This isn’t even a pass/fail assignment, there is no grade here.
Third exercise is to take a blank sheet of copy paper, fold it in quarters so you know where the center is, unfold it, and put the needle down in the middle. Now start sewing a spiral outwards. Repeat with another sheet, but sew inwards, trying to end on the point where the folds intersect. This can be a tough exercise, because you’re learning to gauge by eye the distance between rows of stitching. If you have one, you can use your quilting gauge foot here. Set the gauge at half an inch, and use that gauge to stay on the previous line of stitching. That’s not cheating, that’s using the tools at hand. Try to do both a circular spiral and a rectangular spiral.
Now, thread the machine in contrasting colors in the bobbin and top thread if it wasn’t already, and let’s get a sample of stitches. Straight stitch first. We’re running calibration here, so if your machine has a stitch length lever, put it at the biggest (usually 7 stitches per inch) and sew a few inches. Cut the thread and get out a ruler. Are there 7 stitches in the inch? If yes, good, let’s look at stitch balance. You should barely see a dot of the bobbin thread on the top and you should only see a dot of the top thread on the bottom. (When your thread matches, you won’t see those dots where the stitch actually forms.) If you have loops on either side or one thread lays flat on the paper while the other is loopy? That’s a tension problem. If your stitches are balanced and have no tension problems, repeat the calibration exercise with each marked stop on the stitch length lever, or each whole number if your machine is digital, and take notes if anything is off. If the tension is good, you likely don’t need to have it fixed if the lever says say, 10 stitches to an inch and you’re getting 13 stitches. Just know that your lever is a bit shorter than marked.
If the tension is not working, it’s time to break out some documents and YouTube. You’ll need your machine’s manual, and to start here, with Vintage Sewing Machine Garage’s series on troubleshooting tension. If you prefer books, I’ll point you at Mary Brooks Picken’s Singer Sewing Book. There were around 30 editions, starting in the late 1940s, and they’re generally inexpensive on Thriftbooks or eBay. The differences are mostly in the era of illustration. (Most of the exercises above are variations on her exercises for teaching young sewists.) Her tension lesson is excellent.
Troubleshooting tension is one of the logic puzzles of the sewing machine. Most of the time, it’s not actually the tension that’s the issue, it’s dirt or a scrap of thread or just a mis-threaded machine, so there’s a process starting with re-threading the machine as the manual directs. Then replace the needle — they can get bent. Then wind a new bobbin, per the manual, because sometimes a bobbin is too loose or too tight. Then we start cleaning things. Get out the brush and check the bobbin case for lint or thread; same with the tension wheel if it has one. On newer electronic machines, the tension is often NOT available to the user, so once you have a clean machine with a new needle and freshly wound bobbin, start by setting the tension at the far extreme of where you’re currently not, and try, then back off one notch, try again, and repeat until either you’ve run through all of the tension possibilities, or you’ve found something that is working.
With newer electronic machines you may have to take it into the shop if it’s being extremely wonky, just because it’s not easily available.
But most of the time, it really is something that can be fixed with some cleaning and attention to detail.
Once tension is working… you’re ready to play with fabric.
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