Sewing Machine Needles - Oh Yeah
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
After you’ve been sewing for a while, you find certain notions and fabrics to be ‘the best you’ve ever used - and you won’t use anything else’. Well unless it’s 3 in the morning, nothing is open and you have to finish that thing!
So let’s start this love affair off with sewing machine needles. I feel like I’ve used them all at one time or another, but if you look in my needle drawer, all you’re going to find are Schmetz.
When I was working on that Christening Dress for my newest nephew, they’re all I’d even consider using. I just love them.
Here we go, in no particular favorite order:
- Universal - rounded point, great for wovens and knits, an all around terrific needle.
- Denim or Jeans - reinforced blade and slight ball point, heavy fabrics don’t stand a chance of fighting. The ball point helps prevent damaging your fabric and skipping stitches.
- Stretch - special eye and medium ball point helps prevent skipping stitches and snagging. Great for knits, stretch fabrics and elastic too.
- Ball or Jersey - Ball point primarily for knit fabrics
- Leather - With a cutting point on the end, sewing leather is like cutting through warm butter. My leather version of the Lone Star Vest would not have been possible without this needle.
- Top-Stitch - If you’re doing decorative sewing, this is needle is for you. A very long eye 2mm, means threading and using heavy, fancy threads won’t drive you crazy. Good for using double threads too.
- Microtex - A needle especially for densely woven fabrics, micro fiber and synthetic leathers. It has an especially slim acute point.
- Hemstitch - I used a lot these when creating Heirloom Christening dresses! There’s a wing on each side with creates wonderful open work on light or medium woven fabrics; I used it on delicate cotton batiste with silk and rayon thread.
- Double Eye - Yes it has 2 eyes! Use two different threads at the same time - think of the possible effects. Good for both woven and knit fabrics because it has a univeral point.
- Embroidery - A larger eye and grove means this needle helps to make free-motion embroidery headache free. I do a lot of free-motion stipple work on our wall hangings, sanity matters!
- Metallic - While I will never enjoy sewing with metallic threads (I just sew too fast to really be nice to the thread), this needle helps a bunch. A enlarged grove and bigger eye mean less breakage and throwing things.
- Stretch Twin - Double rows of stitches, perfectly spaced, on knits or stretch fabrics. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 2.5 and 4.0.
- Metallic Twin - Same as for the stretch twin needle, now if I could only sew a bit slower… 2.5 and 3.0.
- Embroidery Twin - Yes we’re on a roll! 2.0 and 3.0.
- Double Hemstitch - Another favorite of mine for heirloom sewing. Has one wing needle and one universal needle - 2.5 mm separates them. Helps create amazing double row stitch designs.
- Universal Twin - Double rows on lots of fabric, think pin-tucks! 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 4.o, 6.0 and 8.0.
- Universal Triple - Yes I have these too. It’s worth the hassle of threading everything up - again, I use to use these on the Christening dresses with rayon and silk threads. Beautiful results every time.
It seems to be a failing that at one time or another, we’ve all used ‘cheap’ or generic sewing machine needles. While they might have got the job done, it was a struggle with them breaking, thread shredding and other delightful reasons that cause us to consider never sewing again.
It is not worth it.
Next time you’re in your favorite fabric shop, pick up a few packages of Schmetz needles and try them out. I guarantee you won’t be sorry you did.
