Singer Classic Heavy Duty Extended Beginners Tutorial

the middle which is the left movement will then go left back to the center and that moves the needle to the right and I'll show you some things to do to get the needle to move in any position you want using the width indicator here when we have it set to a straight stitch we'll see in just a minute this is the width of our zigzag or like I just said if you're doing a straight stitch this will control the position of the needle so what you do do to have full control of the position of the needle is that it works from right to left, so if you have it in the middle you can move it from the center to the left if you have it to the left this will not move it at all if you you have it all the way to the right as you move it it will move it all the way from the right all the way to the left so if you want full control you move the needle to the right and then as you move it up to six it's all the way to the left , if you move it back to zero, there is a needle to the end.

Okay, so if you want to set it anywhere in between, just use the width gauge and, for example, at three, it's pretty much back in the middle, so set it to the correct needle position, set it to a straight stitch, and you can use this needle control. Place it anywhere you want and I'll show you a wider view and you'll see the needle move so you can get a good view of what's happening next, but let me check this little button here if you turn it to the right. you tighten it, it has a plus sign that shows it on the right and that puts more pressure on the presser foot, so if you have a lightweight material, you're going to want to put more pressure on it so it feeds better if you get something heavier.

Depending on how

heavy

the material is, you may back off a little or you may need to tighten it, so it just depends on the style of fabric you're using and a lot of different variables. This is one thing that even some of the more expensive machines don't have that is one of the reasons I like this machine is that you can adjust the pressure on the presser foot and you will learn when you are sewing for example if I am sewing jeans with a very thick side. seam at the hem line normally you would tighten this, but what I do is loosen it because it goes along well, but when it hits the hump of that side seam it allows the foot to come up easier, so it makes sense that it's not pushing. it comes down so hard that it can go up over the top, so sometimes the logic is reversed again, it depends on what you are using, but the good thing is that you have it here to learn and understand and you will have it as an option to cover everything what's above let me go back and show you how to use this woman the needle and we'll go through the controls on the front of the machine okay I'm focused on the needle and I'll show you how it moves.

I'll show you in a minute what the straight stitch setting is on the wrist, but I have it set on the street statue. It's just the default setting that it's going to be set to when I show you the doll and what I'm going to do. what I have to do is use the width indicator at the top. I have my needle position to the right and it's at number three right now on the width, so as I move it up you'll see the needle move to the left, so at six and now I'm going to go all the way down. , there are three to zero and you see the needle is to the right so watch it as it moves so by setting the needle position to the right again you have full control with a straight stitch selected using the width dial for the position of your needle, which will become more important as you start using some of the special feet and you're trying to line up a seam and make it or something you want use this to line it up, put the needle down and get it in the correct position and that's what will allow you to do it again in straight needle position to the right and then turn the width indicator and it will allow you to set your position anywhere. the positions from left to right, okay, let's go over the stitch selector and the link selector and the reverse handle, next, okay, here on the front, starting from the left, this is a reverse dial, so We want to reverse the stitch, we press it down. that wall to go backwards, this will set the length of our stitch, so zero means it doesn't go forward at all.

You turn one that will give you the blue stitches down here in your stitch selector and then you turn it again. any of the links and black will give you all black selectors, so you'll use this to switch to some of the special decorative stitches and utility stitches and then otherwise you'll just use the length indicator to show what's happening here , so The default stitch length is two point two point five to three, so somewhere in that area you will learn that, but in general, the heavier the thread, the thicker the material, the longer the The length of the stitch, the thinner the thread, the lighter the material you go with. a short stitch length, say up to two, two, five or three, somewhere there is a good place to start, this is your stitch selector, so I told you that we are in a straight stitch when we move the needle position . where it works, this is the buttonhole stitch here, this is the blind hem when you come pants or anything you want to blind it and these are all the other stitches, utility stitches that are used decorative stitches and so on, so what I suggest you do What you can do is get some black thread, get some white fabric, use an old pillowcase or something and go through each of the stitches, sew them and mark what it is, make a note or something so you know what it is. and Use it as a reference as you go, so for example in this one in black we have that stitch that we flip over to s1 and it becomes the blue stitch, that's how you work, that tells you how to do everything in the front of the machine I'm going to go ahead and go back to two point five we're going to go back to a straight stitch and I'll do some sewing demonstrations to show you how to do it next okay we're ready to sew now so let me show you a couple of scissors that you may have seen your mother or grandmother use.

These are pinking shears and what are they for, look at how this fabric is fraying at the edge here and use a serger usually to trim things and To keep them under control, you don't have a serger right now and I even use them when I cut fabric and work with large curtain fabrics, you know, things that fall apart when you handle them. I cut with these serrations. scissors, so what they do when you go down the edge is they'll trim it, so keep them pretty straight. Come on, they do it on the edge of the fabric and that prevents it from fraying when you handle it, so if you get really rough with that, it didn't hurt much but anyway if you cut it with these scissors you can handle it without to fray so much, anyway you make this edge here that allows you to handle it without fraying and even when you sew it and separate the seams after you've done the stitch at the half inch or 5/8 inch mark, which gives you it helps put it on and it won't fray inside when you wash it and such, so get some. pinking shears and you'll have them forever and they do a good job when it comes to trimming the fabric and working with it to prevent threads from getting everywhere okay to start selling we're going to put our fabric underneath. the presser foot we're going to lower the presser foot and one of the rules and sewing is that you start with what they call backtacking, so what I do is go forward the distance that I'm going to go back and then I go back and go forward, the reason why I do it I don't want to go backwards and then forwards it puts too much tension on the end of the fabric where you're trying to pin it so press the back.

We have our stitch length set to 2.5, we are doing a straight stitch, we have the position of our needle, go ahead and place it in the center and when you place it in the center, you want to take the width to zero because anything beyond zero it will move to the left of the center position, so when you place it in the center, reset the whip to zero. I have the tension set to four and I'm going to sew, this is called Muslim. That's cheap cotton fabric that's all we use it a lot for testing so I would go back about three stitches and we let go of the handle and then we start selling and we go forward when you start sewing hold the ends of the thread behind the presser foot. that keeps you from getting a little bit of a mess under the fabric, a little ball of wrinkled thread, so always do that, hold on to it and even I hold on to it for the first few stitches when I'm going, it just helps to pull the fabric well. and right, put a little bit of pressure on your foot and just guide your fabric and don't want to pull on it or anything, we're going to let the machine miss hit it and you can guide it with one of the guides.

Try to keep your story unique. This is straight, what I'm sewing right now, so I'm getting to the end, so I can turn the wheel to get to the end and then I'm going to hold reverse and use my foot to go backwards. or I can turn it by hand just to make sure I keep it under control to go to your three stitches. I'll do a three back and I'll do a four and I'll lift the foot to its highest position, lift the presser foot and that will come loose. the tension and you can take out the thread and there's a thread cutter right here that you can use so I'm going to go ahead and use that and that will cut the thread take the tails move them back to the back of the machine and look at your stitch like this that what you're looking for is this slightly stiffer fabric because it's very thin, but you're looking to see if there are any loose loops on the back of the material.

It's so thin that you can actually see the pink, which it is. the top as it rotates and winds with the blue bottom thread and on this side we don't see any of the bullet so I would take this tension, it actually looks pretty good, you can take it up to four and a half after doing that. which could be maybe a little bit tighter, but if you see this, you pull the fabric down, it should lie flat. I'm going to show you what it does when the tension is too strong, you cut my strings here, okay, I'm going. to tighten the tension up to nine, so we turn it all the way up, so now the top thread is going to be very difficult to pull and what it's going to do is when the needle goes up, it's going to pull very hard on this loop here. at the bottom and you'll see the result of being too tight, okay, that's it nine.

I made some points there. I'm going down to seven. A few points out of seven. Go down to six. In a few points. Gonna. five points I'm going down to three edges I'm going down to two Did you sew? Yeah and then we got into one of these points and finally zero and some points and we'll see. the difference between those I'm going to go back to four to finish here so we can tie it now with the right needle in the highest position and we can pour it. I'm going to use scissors to cut this a little closer.

This time, let's look back, we're going to thread down here so we can see where we started, okay, you'll see the gather on that, how the thread is, you see little lines there, that means your tension is too tight. at the top as we go down you'll see it starts to get flatter and flatter and somewhere around the six mark it looks good the cloth sling is pretty flat now it rolls up a little bit so when we get Back to about four or five, I think I went from six to four, is where it looks like that look that you can see here when it got too loose.

Look at the pink thread, how we have the loops, that means our tension is too loose. when you see your tension is too loose when you see this down here it's wrinkled it's too tight it's pulling too hard you can see the tension in the fabric there and somewhere around here it's just like around four on this here and here it is where it came loose down here it is not so noticeable on this side it is going to show on that side and what happens is that the coil tension generally does not have to be changed on the machines, only in extreme circumstances do you have to change that, but the bottom part has tension pulling this way, the top part interlaces this way and pulls up, the idea is that it is balanced enough to where the thread meets in the middle of the fabric, it is a little more difficult to do on this fabric because it's very thin, but you can see that it's nice and tight here and that's what you would want, and this is too loose, which shows you from extremely tight to the mid-range, the mid-range is pretty forgiving, although if you slack off too much you get this. if you get too tight, you get it, so that shows you something about tension, let's talk about needles and the importance of needle collars, so let me reset for that and we'll go over that, okay? go through the needles and the different styles of needles there are and what they are for it is very important when you sew to know the appropriate needle and the appropriate thread for the fabric you are selling here is the most common needle is a regular point universal needle I would suggest that when you start getting thesizes of various sizes, you can get these packages, these numbers, the big number is the metric, the small number is the US.

The measurement is the same and the metric means 11 us and this is the style that the

singer

assigns to their needles. This is a style 20 20 for example, and in this pack I have an 80 11, a 90 14, and a 116. In USS it says 11 14 16 metric, it's 80 9100, so that's the way you measure needles. The

singer

colors the stem to tell you what color or size they are. The orange, blue and purple will tell you the size, so it is a kind of color. -coded way to find out what you have if you know you can't read what's written on it, so anyway this is a generic general cotton needle and stuff, so that's the best way to put it, most fabrics, when you really get down to sewing things, you need something beyond this, so let me show you what knit t-shirts are for.

I have some knitting here somewhere, find it there. It's cotton like an old t-shirt, you'll want to use a pen needle and the pen needles. they are just a ball and they separate the fabric where you see the fabric and they don't cut it like other needles do so use it on any of the nets and you will be successful there is also a stretch needle I don't have one of those here it's in my stash somewhere, but there is a stretch needle that can be used for real stretch fabrics, many people find that using the stretch needle works well for some of the finer fabrics, so either a pen or a stretch, either should work and I have both in my stash that way.

If you try one and it doesn't look quite right, you can try stretching the pen and it might look better, so use it again. Buy enough fabric where you can test your stitches, okay, that's the pen, let's get to the denim, this one and this one, two of them here, these are denim needles, this is Smets, Alexa Metz needles, this is the singer, being the same, they are identical in size. both 116, the only difference is that the main actors are different, so I would get size 16 and size 18 and Singer. You can buy them where you are 16 and 18 and a pack may be a good option for you, but do you have size 18 in stock because Have you ever worn all the Levi's that are 100% cotton, they are 14.5 ounce denim, the side seam It is extremely dense and I have tested machines?

You can see some of my test videos showing the 20 year difference in a size 16 and a size 18 NATO. in denim, so that's what I would get, let me show you what I mainly use for denim. This is a top sewing needle and is size 116, so this is what I use when I sew denim. The reason I use a stretch needle. I mean a top stitch needle, the eye of the needle is larger and I use thick thread to allow that

heavy

thread to pass through without damaging it anyway, that way the top stitching looks great, so on denim top sewing needles are a good choice.

I have the same style point, that a denim needle has a larger eye for thicker top seams, the fabric gives you a little better result, so that's what I mainly use when I sew my jeans. The last time is the leather needle. I am going to differentiate between the leather ones. and synthetic leather faux artificial leather use this for leather, you can use it for synthetic leather, most people use a denim needle, it says denim needle 16 and it works great for synthetic leather, but when you sew real leather, Cal hides fur cheap pork. anything to get the needle for leather the reason you want it the tip of the needle is like a knife and it cuts the skin to form the stitch which is what you need when it comes to leather so for leather use a leather needle faux leather you can get away with a denim needle again try having both to pin I'm going to show you several options I don't paint much I've learned to sew whether I use an industrial technique or not Don't use pins on anything that's especially on the seams of the legs, things like that.

I know, Olaf Abra, but first I'll give you some tips about pins. These styles are best to use instead of those with ball heads. these will distort when you pin and sew, the ball lifts the seam a little, it distorts it if you use these pins, it won't make them harder to use and all that, but you will get a better thing with these flat head pins from old style, then you will do it with these pins. I pulled them out because this is important again when you're using knits, don't use these sharp needles, use a ballpoint needle and again it's like your sewing needle.

It won't cut the fabric, it will actually go around the fabric without cutting it, so these are ball pins. If I have to pin a double knit fabric or any type of fabric, this is what I use instead of standard and standard needles. needles My favorite needles are these quilters needles because they are longer, it is much easier to use and see how flat the head is, so it has a nice flat head that keeps it away from the head, it is actually flatter than the needle, so they are not distorted. when you stick them on the fabric like this, I wouldn't use it on this fabric because it has a short pin, but when you stick it on the fabric, it stays nice and flat, so it doesn't distort it compared to where you put the pin. and the head is fat and you get it all the way, so the idea when pinning is to try to use almost the entire needle and that ties everything up nicely, so you know, it's a little bit much, but do something. so you can see when you stretch the fabric the pen is actually taller than the end here so that's a good option they're longer which makes it easier to get in and out and use them that's why like using those, another great option, especially faux leather for these wonderful clips, they work great, they're quick and easy to put into the seam and then when you're sewing you just press like this and pull to the side that's coming to the right.

These come in boxes of 50, if you buy them get two boxes because when you start using them throughout some sewing you will be able to go through 50 of them, it's easy to learn that the hard way, the last time, don't do it. last, you will get the seam. Ripper don't buy one of these bottom two or three at a time, they wear out very quickly and can tear the fabric if you are trying to rip out a seam, use a dull seam ripper so make sure you have two or three. Two or three spares of these are always on hand because you will have to tear out a long seam.

Suddenly the rose is dull and you'll have to grab another one. Throw the doll one way. Don't leave her around and you. you go through them, they're like paper towels, you go through them quickly and you use them a lot, you'd be so big you're going to rip out the seams with scissors, these are the ones you can find at any Walmart fabric store. You're fine and you get the money. These are KY scissors, they are made in Japan and there is absolutely no comparison and the quality of these to these, but the difference is that these are seven dollars, eight dollars, whatever.

I bought this with another one that was like $60. They are more expensive, but you really get what you pay for in scissors. They will sharpen them for free if you return them. They have a lifetime warranty. I have several different sizes of these. I love these scissors. They are very pretty and the nice thing about them is when you need to cut on the tip and this one is curved, so if I sewed my seam and I need to cut a piece of fabric like this, it is curved and I can position it correctly. there so I get it right now let me turn it where I can hold it and stick it in there and just cut that thread like this the tip isn't that precise so when you're trying to cut something sometimes you're going to have to hit it twice sometimes it'll do it perfectly , but I highly recommend Kai Sears scissors.

Let's go back to the needles for a minute. This is my stash. It's a good thing you have a stash of needles and this. it's a leather pen, denim, heavy, just generic heavy

duty

needles, that means it's thicker, heavier, it's not for denim, it's not at all, it's just a general purpose heavy needle, yeah, and you say I have a lot of ball points because I make them. lots of knits but I'll get you a stash anyway, these have no shelf life, last time I go to a fabric store or whatever I buy a pack or two of what I need and I should put them in my save , so I have them good.

I have a little different material here to show you the proper tension. This will allow us to see it join in the middle of a fabric better, so let's use it to show you the proper tension, so I'm going. to set the tension to about 4.5 I think this is probably about what we want for this so let's go ahead and sew this let's take a look at our fabric okay I'm going to get the distance I want to sew first and one of Lo All you have to do is pull out the ends of the thread enough so that you can grab them easily.

The bobbin thread is a little sharp and when cutting it, so I pulled it out a little more, it's easy to reach in there and grab a thread. Wait, I can scare him before you start. One of the last things when you put on this type of plaid is that you can follow a line of thread, so I'm going to try to get to the line of black thread with the wrong side, so here we are. Come on, I'm going to sew backwards to start, okay, so the first half is probably the right tension. I'm going to do the second half as 1 if you go down to 0 and then I'm going to do everything. the way up to nine for the rest and back to town 24.5 50 stitches backwards moving forward to sew or two and again put the needle in the highest position and then pull the thread back, okay, this will allow us to see much better what What's happening, okay are you going to look closely here in black there is our pink thread we don't see any blue we only see pink we turn it over we should only see blue and not pink and that's what we do that's the right tension we don't do it We do If you see some pink, you barely see it because it's black yarn, so it might be a little tighter.

I was at four point five, like I told you before, I thought five had to be perfect, so seeing that it would work. In fact, I went up to five until I couldn't see that pink thread anymore and it came together in the middle. I'll make some points here in just a second on the highest tension. Yeah when we get to nine here, you'll see. I can barely see that the pink nine is too tight because you can see how the thread is gathered there, it's not as flat because it's here, it's a little puffy, which tells you that the tension is too tight and then again when we start to loosen.

In the thread you see the loops on the back and then I tightened it back to the highest setting here, which was nine, so the nine raised it to where you couldn't see anything at all and then I went back to normal here, like this that anyway. that shows you a slightly thicker fabric. What's going on, let me show you some here with a 5.5 setting to see if we can get it. I'm going to go up to six and see what it looks like, so always buy extra fabric when you're sewing and it'll allow you to do these tests, it'll save you a lot of time and effort, you won't waste fabric and you won't waste time, and do it, so get enough or you can cut some strips. and run and do your test points and it will be a lot easier, you know, with a lot more confidence once you can see this, okay, that's six.

I'm going to go down to 5.5, this machine is going to be very fast, so if you put your foot down. The problem with this table is a plastic table, so it's going to jump all over the place. Try to keep it slow and steady. Go to the highest position. What you will see when you are in the highest position of Addis, you will see the top thread. around the bobbin when it disappears, you know it's pretty much in the up position and it's going to release the thread, okay, yeah, that looks good, so you can see down into that stitch.

I don't see that you need the pink on the reverse side so around five point five to six will be a good stitch for this so that's what you do you only get one strip so a few lines of stitches determine which one it is the best and what I would normally do on this is I would make a. tension each of these or half down with one tension the other half of the other that way it's easier to keep up with what you did and when you look at it it makes more sense just leave the tails at the end when you start Just so you know which end did you start on and so I know on this one you know what the tension was for a six in the first half and a 5.5 in the second half so I can look at it and decide what I want to do.

Anyway, that shows the tension. Well, I'm going to use a special presser foot called a border presser foot that you can get online and it has a guide here on the right side that you can follow your fabric by and then you can look where the needle is, it has a little bar there, so what it allows the thread to do is have a little bit more thread to cover the edge and loosen up the red, I wouldn't press back a little bit here on top of our presser foot and Put on our presser foot for top edge.

You can use your normal presser foot to do this. You just have to learn how to use it now. The nice thing about this one is that it has God there to keep the fabric going and you get a nice even stitch. to the bottom of the fabric when you use this foot, that's why I show it to you andI highly recommend so okay I have the s1 activated and it is at point D and point a is a straight point and as you turn the stick to the right a click will be B 2 C 3 D and so on when you look at your manual , so we're in sketch D with s1 active, so that's the blue stitch, so I'll show you this. one, you see how it goes back and forth, it's a reinforced stitch, I just put it against that little black guide, keep it nice and straight, watch my attention, I have my tension set to 3, that looks pretty good, you want it between 2 and 3, depending on how thick the fabric is, what I'm doing on my left hand, I just want to make sure I keep the tension next to that guide as it does because it can tend to move away to get to the thread. just keep pushing a little edge right next to the edge, okay, so the cube that we have here is our overhang over the edge seam and so you can see how well it's doing with that guy down there, everything's fine and Still that's why I recommend getting the guide with practice.

You can do it with a straight stitch foot, what you want to do is keep the fabric aligned right there when you use the normal presser foot, you can get the same results, you turn the needle and see what you want. it comes off the edge here, that's what creates the serrated edge that goes around it and again your tension should be between two and three, one was on three on this fabric and you press it on a light plane, it's going to be nice, so that's the presser foot for the top edge and how to do the stitched edge on the machine, so again, looking at the manual on page 24, we are using the D stitch, which is that stitch there and again, which is a and as you turn the knob clockwise it will go to B C and D on the blue setting, the s-1 setting, that's that stitch, so anyway I hope this helps you get started with your machine, it's a good fundamental machine again, you can sew leather and denim, which makes it really nice. and I hope you get along well and that everything turns out well for you.

This should give you a good foundation to start with and if I can help you with anything please post it in the comments section and I'll see if I can. I can answer your question so that's all for now, if you have any questions let me know, take care.