There are numerous ways to make starting sewing frustrating, and this page is where I am going to teach you how to make sure none of these ever happen!

• Dont start your sewing with the needle at or very near the top edge of your fabric. This way the foot doesn’t have much fabric to grab on to and it is very easy for the fabric to get scrunched up or even get pulled into the inside of the machine. Very frustrating when this happens! If you start a bit further down, until say 2/3 of your presser foot has some fabric under it, this is then extremely unlikely to happen.
  
  
• Using your handwheel, turn this towards you until the needle is inside your fabric. Starting with the needle up can cause your threads to tangle up before you have even properly started. Which is annoying!
  
  
• Just a reminder, only turn the handwheel towards you (anti clockwise). This is SO important I will keep talking about this.
  
  
• If you can, grab both threads and pull them out towards the back of the machine. This makes sure your loose threads don’t get tangled in your stitches and it also prevents the threads gettibg tangled inside the machine, as you have just removed all the slack from the thread path, all the way from the spool to the end you were just pulling. Smart!
  
  
• As you have placed your needle a little way away from the top edge of your fabric this also gives you room to back stitch. Back stitching, or reverse stitching, locks the stitches in and makes sure they don’t start unravelling later on. All machines have a reverse button or lever, and on most machines the machine reverses only as long as you hold this in/ down. 3 stitches in reverse is enough, unless you accidentally started really far from the edge and you need to bridge more of a gap.
  
  
• Your job as a machinist is NOT to feed the fabric through, not to pull it out of the back either. If you do this you may just end up bending and even smashing needles, and we don’t want that. Your job is to take the weight of the fabric so it doesn’t pull, to steer it, and if it is badly behaving fabric, to keep it taught so pleats don’t happen.
  

Once you have got your chair, pedal and machine in the right place, straightened your back, lined your fabric up under the foot properly, put the needle down, pulled the threads and back stitched, you can start sewing forwards. Try to stick to an even speed, not too fast, not too much stopping and starting. keep an eye on edges and pins and seam allowances and folds and anything that should not not be going under the needle.

When done, back stitch a few stitches. Turn your needle out of the work with the handwheel (which way do we turn again?). Pull your fabric about ten cm from the needle, and cut your threads on your fabric. Not a bit away or halfway or anything like that. Tidy it up neatly. Then also cut the threads you left at the beginning of your sewing. Again, on the fabric.