When you look at a sewing machine from a distance, the concept seems pretty simple. Feed fabric through a sewing machine and the machine makes stitches to keep it together. And yet when you sit down to actually make that process happen for the first time, you realize there’s a bit more to a sewing machine than just pushing the pedal. So today we are going back to basics and talking about how to thread a singer sewing machine 

I love Singers, especially for any beginner sewer or quilter, of the two I’ve owned over the years, I find that they are just simple to understand which makes trouble shooting super easy. 

The best Singer sewing machine for beginners (and the model I’m using in this tutorial)

For this tutorial I’ll be using my Singer Heavy Duty sewing machine, however even if this isn’t your model of sewing machine, almost all Singer sewing machine thread in the same manner, so the steps will still apply.

Don’t yet have a sewing machine? For the last few years I have been using a basic Singer Heavy Duty sewing machine and if you are a beginner who’s getting starting in sewing, this is a fantastic first “starter” machine. 

There aren’t a huge amount of specialty stitches, and no onboard computers. All of the unnecessary bells and whistles you might find on some machines were bypassed on this one in favor of using more quality gears to give this machine its heavy duty name. 

The heavy duty model has all metal parts inside so no matter how much you think sewing machines may “hate” you, you’ll find this one near impossible to break. 

And since Singer bypassed a lot of the unnecessary fancier features, the cost of the machine is definitely one of the cheapest options on the market, not to mention readily available for purchase. Durable, minimal, and cheap, the three features that make this model the best option all around for beginner quilters and sewers. 

So if you’re looking for a beginner sewing machine to get started with be sure to check out the Singer Heavy Duty on Amazon here

How does a sewing machine actually make a stitch?

Before we get started it might help to understand how a sewing machine actually makes a stitch so all of the parts make sense later. 

If you’ve ever sewn anything by hand you’ll recognize a sewing needle, long, thin, and pointy, with a hole at the far end for the thread to go through. When you hand sew, the sharp end goes through the fabric first pulling the thread behind it. 

A sewing machine works in the opposite way. The eye of the needle is at the end of the needle that punctures the fabric first and the rest of the needle follows. 

Because a sewing machine can’t put a needle all the way through the fabric and back around like typical hand sewing, it instead pushes the thread through the fabric, instead of pulling it through, so only part of the needle needs to go through the fabric to get the thread through.

A metal shuttle in the bottom portion of the machine spins around and hooks onto the slack in the thread that gets pushed down by the needle.  

The shuttle grabs on to the needle’s thread and rotates around the bobbin, hooking on to the bobbin thread preventing the needle thread from slipping back through the fabric and creating a stitch! 

So in order to learn how to thread a sewing machine, Singer or otherwise, you’ll need both halves of the stitch: the threaded needle, and bobbin. 

Today we are focusing on how to thread the top of the machine and through the needle, but I have a second part to this post here that you can read for how to wind and insert the bobbin.

How to thread a Singer sewing machine

Fortunately nowadays, learning how to thread a sewing machine, singer or otherwise, has become relatively easy since the companies are nice enough to number the thread pathways. Whether or not you are actually using a Singer, the steps are typically very similar.

Start with the spool of thread at the top of the sewing machine. It’s likely that there will be a thin piece of metal or plastic it can sit on to stabilize it while you sew. You’ll want to have about a forearms length of thread unwound from the spool to start. 

Thread guide(s)

Depending on your machine you may have one or two of these, but they will usually be small and metal. These little hooks will keep your thread roughly in place so slack during sewing does not get caught anywhere or fall out of place.

In some cases they may help with tension of your thread as well to keep your stitches tight and secure. 

In the case of a Singer, you’ll want to go through both metal guides, and follow the numbers DOWN through the right most slot, and hook around the bottom plastic piece. 

Thread take-up lever

The next step is to hook around the thread take up lever at the top of the machine. If you hooked around the bottom plastic piece, you’ll head up through the left slot, hook around the metal take up lever at the top, and then head down again through the same left slot. 

If you do not see the top of the take up lever, crank the hand wheel on the right hand side of the machine toward you until you see it!

What does a thread take up lever do exactly?

A thread take up lever does exactly what it sounds, it unwinds thread from the spool for the needle to use. 

When thread is being pulled, there is tension on the thread. Instead of that tension happening right at the needle, the thread take up lever “pre-unwinds” the thread so the pulling tension can happen at the take up lever and the plastic hook you caught it on instead. 

This way the tension of your stitches at your needle can be controlled much more reliably for consistent stitches.

Thread guide

Once you have hooked the thread take up lever there is one more thread guide to slide behind right at the top of the needle, and once you’ve got that hooked, its time to thread the needle!

Once the needle is threaded your top half of the machine is threaded and good to go.

In Short

Guide – Guide – Down – Up – Down – Guide – Needle

Game changing secret feature 

I owned my heavy duty Singer for three years before I realized it had this game changing feature. 

You ready for it?

(Semi) Automatic needle threader. 

Actual game changer. 

THREE YEARS I sat threading that needle by hand. Maybe I’m just behind the times and everyone already knew this but me and I’m way too excited about a well known thing. That’s very possible.

But originally I thought, there was no way such a basic machine like mine would have a feature like that, so I never bothered to look.

Thats when I stumbled across an article online that mentioned it in passing that made me stop and check.

So be sure to double check to see if your machine has one as well and if its ground breaking news to you too, then let me show you how to use it. It’s so simple. 

In the back, behind the presser foot, is a white ribbed tab. 

Pull the white tab down, you’ll notice it’s attached to a metal piece with three little hooks on it. 

When your machine is threaded and at the point where you are ready to thread the needle, put the needle in the highest position and gently pull the tab down and twist slightly toward you and hold it there. You’ll feel it when the center hook slips through the eye of the needle. 

Take your thread and hook it around the left most hook, and draw it across the front of the needle, hooking it under the right most hook. By hooking those two, it should naturally hook the middle one as well. 

Gently release the white tab so it pulls back and it should pull your thread right through the eye of the needle for you. Just pull the rest of the end through and you are good to go!

Literal magic. 

Before we can begin sewing

We’ll need a bobbin wound and ready to go. If you are unfamiliar with how to wind a bobbin, there is a part two to this article that goes into depth on how to wind, insert, and thread your bobbin and get started on your sewing project!

To see part two and finish up threading your Singer sewing machine, be sure to head to the article here.

Why do sewing machines hate me?! (Common sewing machine issues and how to fix them)

The thread keeps breaking

Bad news: there are a few different reasons why thread breaks in a sewing machine

Good news: they are all easy to fix

Here are a few things to look at if your thread keeps breaking:

• The tension of the machine is too high – try lowering the tension using the dial on the top of the machine to relieve the tension
• The thread came out of one of the thread guides or the thread take up lever. This causes the machine to lose control of the thread tension and it breaks. The easiest way to fix it is simply rethread the top of the machine.
• You might be using too high a thread weight. The higher the thread weight, the skinnier the thread physically is. This means it will break under lower levels of tension compared to higher weight threads. The sweet spot of thread weight for sewing machine is 30-50wt. Any higher and it might be the thread, not the machine. Swap it out for a lower thread weight and see if it helps. 

The thread keeps bunching

This one can be a tricky one but where the thread is bunching can be a good clue to figuring out where the problem is. 

If your thread is bunching at the very start of your seam in the first 4-5 stitches, what is usually happening is that because those thread ends aren’t under tension from other previous stitches, the tension goes all over the place until the stitches lock themselves in after the first few stitches.

Although you can’t necessarily stop the bunching on the first couple of stitches, a good way to solve bunching of thread on your project is by using a “header” scrap of fabric. Feed the scrap through the machine first to anchor down the thread, and then feed your project through. 

The bunching of thread will happen on the scrap instead of your finished product, and once your seam is completed, you can just snip the header scrap off. 

If you are seeing this issues in the middle of a seam, your thread may have slipped off of a thread guide, or take up lever. The thread may have also slipped out of the guide in the bobbin. Rethread the sewing machine AND the bobbin, and see if it gets better.

Sewing machine is skipping stitches

If you haven’t read the section of this post about how a sewing machine makes a stitch, I recommend going back to the top of this post. 

When the bobbin shuttles around and catches the top thread, a stitch is made. If you happen to be speed stitching and are the type of sewer with a lead foot, (we’ve all been there) you might see a lot of skipped stitches where one stitch in the line is twice as long as the rest. 

What is happening, is when the sewing machine is moving at super fast speeds, the bobbin shuttle misses the top thread as the needle goes down. This means nothing is keeping the top thread from pulling back through to the top creating a skipped stitch, one thats twice as long as the others. 

This fix is likely the hardest on this list. Slow that machine down 😛

Needle keeps bending/snapping

All of the potential causes of this issue do the same basic thing. They cause something to get in the way of the needle preventing it from punching through the fabric:

• Your fabric is too think for that style needle (think layers of leather or denim)
• You sewed over a pin and have impeccable aim with the needle causing it to bend/break from exactly catching the pin. 
• When you sew over pins (and catch them with the needle) regularly if the needle doesn’t break, the alignment of the needle can often shift over to the point where it actually catches the edge of the presser foot or the bottom plate of the sewing machine. 

Depending on what your specific situation is, you may be able to simply go slower to get through the project or adjust the needle so it doesn’t hit the edge of the machine. 

Some cases may require professional repair of the alignment of your needle if enough damage has been done, but in most cases, you should be able to get through your project before worrying too much about it.