Sewing Tip: Thread Saver

If you are like me working on a sewing machine without a lot of bells and whistles, this may be something that you deal with that makes you want to pull out your hair.

When finishing a piece and removing it from the machine, then sewing the next piece and thread pulls itself out of the needle. You then have to stop and rethread your machine, ARG - I hate when this happens.

If you have a new machine this feature may already be built in, the needle lift will stay in the up position, so when you move to the next piece the needle goes down and the thread stays put and begins to sew. However older machines, or machines without this feature the needle threader will end up where luck would have it, for me this is always down. I don't have the skill to stop the machine with the threader always at the top so I devised this cheat to keep the thread IN the needle.

I call it a thread saver, really I could call it a hair saver as it stops me wanting to pull my hair out. When working on a single item, that goes in and out of the machine I keep a small piece of scrap fabric nearby to sew onto when a task is complete. I leave the thread saver on the machine as I prep the next step, when I am ready to sew again, the needle will stay threaded. You have to cut as each task is complete, sometimes I will use 2 in tandem to complete a project.

First picture, complete task end with thread saver, then keep the scrap fabric thread saver on the machine as project exits, trim and move to next step