Bobbin Cleaning

Well I thought I was all set on auto pilot for the past month with my blog posts; unfortunately, technology continues to elude me. As you may know, I injured (or rather, re-injured) myself a couple of months ago, and after several weeks rest I started physio, as the British call it (I watched a lot of British shows during aforementioned rest…) Since I was going to be on a sewing hiatus, I wrote up and (so I thought) posted for future publication a few quick tips on embroidery. But nothing was posting, and I didn’t notice until this week – oops.

But here there are now, in rapid succession, starting with cleaning your bobbin case…. See you here again soon!

^{The picture’s a bit blurry, but you can see how ragged the edge of the satin stitch looks.}

If your embroidery designs are getting a little long in the bobbin stitches, i.e., lots of bobbin thread is showing on top, it’s probably time to clean your bobbin case. As far as I know, all multi-needles come with a vertical bobbin – the kind all machines used to have. The bobbin case looks like this:

It’s a quick and simple fix; take piece of stiff paper (I’m using the corner of a piece of tearaway stabilizer), and run it under the little spring that holds the thread down.

That’s it! Doesn’t look like much, does it? But that tiny bit of build-up stops the spring from keeping tension on the thread, thus allowing the bobbin thread to get pulled to the top side. While you have it out, you might want to run a cotton swab around the inside of the case too, just to pick up any bits of threads or lint.

If you were stitching a satin stich as I am here, you can just back up your machine and stitch right over it, no problem. See, looks much better now! In fact, most stiches will be fine if you go back over them, just make sure to clip any loopy threads or nests on either side of the fabric before stitching over it again. You can of course, remove any previous stitching instead.