A small piece of fabric is quickly hooped, some thread is loaded, a few buttons are punched, and VOILA! An embroidery design magically appears. All focus is on the machine stitching and the rest of the process is ignored.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts and in my Craftsy class, 20 Things Every Machine Embroidery Should Know, there’s a little more to it than just the stitching part.

Developing good habits can take you a long way towards that perfect, professional look you crave. So check out my list of “bad habits” below and see if there are any that you’ve allowed to creep into your work flow on a regular basis.

They’re not in any particular order, say, from least offensive to worst, just in a more or less semi-logical order. And, given more time, I could probably come up with more but these are the most common ones I see on Facebook, chat groups, and in classes.

Inspect the bobbin case every time you change the bobbin and sweep it out often with the little brush that came with your machine.

Canned air is not recommended on domestic machines. Instead, you can get some little vacuum attachments like these from Amazon. They’re also great for cleaning computers.

Plus, I use them on the little storage trays on the inside of my sewing cabinet and in drawers to get the lint and threads out without having to remove everything in the drawer.

At some point you’ll need to do a more thorough cleaning of the bobbin area, especially if you experience a bird nest and have a wad of thread tangled in your bobbin area.

Review your operator manual to see if other routine maintenance is required, such as oiling. here:

3. NOT TAKING YOUR MACHINE IN FOR MAINTENANCE.

While I’m on a theme here about taking care of your machine, don’t skip any professional maintenance.

How often will depend on how you use your machine but even if it sits in a closet for a whole year, you still need to have it serviced by a qualified technician. Plus, it’s often cheaper to maintain a sewing machine than it is to repair it once it’s broken due to lack of maintenance.

For machines that are too large to easily transport, check around with other embroiderers or an embroidery shop to see who services their machines and arrange to have the tech to stop by when he’s in your area.

4. NOT CHANGING THE NEEDLE OFTEN ENOUGH/USING WHATEVER NEEDLE IS IN THE MACHINE.

If you’re not a needle nerd, then you might not realize that the needle is a very precisely engineered piece of high tech machinery. Needles designed for machine embroidery are built for high speed with decorative threads, which are generally more fragile than construction threads.

The rule for selecting the right needle is to choose the smallest needle that can carry the thread through the fabric without damage to the needle, thread, or fabric. Smaller needles place the stitches more precisely and the size I use most often is 75/11.

Needles are a good thing to buy in bulk so that you always have them on hand. A damaged needle or the wrong needle can damage the fabric, shred the thread, and skip stitches. I talk quite a bit about needles in my Craftsy class, Thread Savvy.

6. NOT USING EMBROIDERY BOBBIN THREAD.

The purpose of the bobbin thread for embroidery is to pull the top thread to the back and be invisible on the front. You’ll want a thread that doesn’t unnecessarily add extra bulk or stiffness to the design.

I love prewound machine embroidery bobbins because they are evenly wound with the type and size of thread I need and they work well with most of my machines. If you want to match the bobbin thread to the top, choose 60 wt polyester embroidery thread for the bobbin. Using a matching 40 wt thread will make your embroidery feel stiffer.

I buy bobbins in quantity because this drastically reduces the price per bobbin. Prewounds are more evenly wound, hold more thread, and are more convenient. I do like these plastic Neb Prewound Bobbins better than the cardboard kind.

They do cost a little more but they seem to run smoother, don’t block the bobbin out indicator on most machines, and are sturdier than cardboard, which can swell and warp in humid climates.

I keep a box of both black and white. Black is best for stitching on dark fabrics. If you don’t think you’ll ever use a gross of black, smaller packages are available. In fact, you might want to just try one of the smaller ones to see how they do in your machine before really stocking up.

7. “FLOATING” EVERY PROJECT INSTEAD OF HOOPING.

“Floating” is the term used when, instead of hooping the project with the stabilizer(s) between the rings of the hoop, you only hoop the stabilizer and let the project ride on top. Yes, there are times when this is called for but most “normal” items should be hooped between the rings.

The hoop is part of the stabilizing process and securing your project to the stabilizer with spray, tape, pins, and/or basting stitches is generally less stable. Items that shift during stitching can have gaps in the stitching or other mismatched areas that indicate registration problems.

More on floating an be found in this post: Turning Thrift Store Finds into a Fashion Statement.

CRAFTSY COUPON UPDATE NOTICE

Since the coupon codes were originally posted on this site, Craftsy has changed the way they handle coupons limiting them to 90 days.

Because of that, I have to figure out new way to provide coupon codes… Another thing to add to my to do list.

9. TUGGING ON THE FABRIC AFTER HOOPING.

This a big no-no! Unless you’re stitching on something that will be worn stretched, you should never pull on the fabric after hooping as this can stretch and distort the fabric. Stretched fabric will pucker more than unstretched fabric. Learn more about what causes puckering: Why Does My Embroidery Pucker?

13. OVERUSE OF TESAS.

Temporary embroidery spray adhesives, or TESAs as I call them, are wonderful products. However, you don’t need them on every project. Excessive and/or improper use can gum up your machine or your needle. Once the eye of the needle gets gummed up, you’ll experience more thread breaks.

If the sticky area is isolated, you might be able to clean out the needle eye by “flossing” it with some thread. Don’t use a pin or other sharp object as you could possibly damage the eye, which could cause more thread shredding and breakage.

Tip: My favorite TESA is Sulky KK2000. You can force dissipate it with a warm dry iron. Good to know if you need to wet your project (say, to remove stabilizer) and the adhesive is still active.

14. NOT TRIMMING THREAD TAILS OR JUMPS PROPERLY.

Nothing annoys me more than seeing an otherwise great looking embroidery with untrimmed thread jumps!

Newer machines often trim threads for you at color changes and when threads exceed a certain length. On short connections, your machine may not trim and on more basic models, your machine may not trim at all.

Machines that do trim, will pull the thread to the back and leave a short thread tail. These thread tails are security so resist the urge to trim them off flush with your fabric!

On jumps that your machine doesn’t trim, use tweezers to apply a bit of tension and then clip with thread snips close to the fabric. I recommend trimming any uncut jumps at each color change so they don’t get sewn into the design.

If those jumps are short, then only trim the front. If they’re long enough on the back to catch on something, then trim them leaving a 1/4″-3/8″ tail on each trimmed end.

Learn more about jumps and trims and when they’re needed here: About Those Dreaded Jump Stitches! They’re not always the mark of a poor digitizing!

16. NEVER OPTIMIZING MACHINE TENSIONS.

Yeah, new machines are pretty smart and do so many things automatically for us that it can be easy to think they do everything perfectly every time. Be sure to pay attention to your machine’s thread tensions, both upper and lower and make any adjustments as needed.

Tensions can be balanced and still be too loose or too tight. Too loose will be loopy and too tight can cause puckering. You want the Goldilocks zone of just right.

17. NOT TESTING YOUR DESIGN.

You just downloaded a new design and you’re going to sew it on that brand new t-shirt to wear to the barbecue later. Time is short, so you hoop up the t-shirt and get ready to stitch. You saw an image of the design on the internet, it looked great so everything should be fine, right? Uh, well, do you feel lucky?

If the image you saw was a “3D” version from software and the design was free and it’s not from a reputable digitizer who’s known for high quality digitizing, how do you know it was even test sewn? Even if you see a scanned version of the sew-out and it looks great, that’s still no guarantee that it will sew well for you on your machine with your project.

Before you stitch it, open it up in an embroidery program and do a virtual sew out with a sewing simulator. If you’re an experienced embroiderer, you’ll know what to look for.

If not, well that’s the beyond the scope of this post so just check out my ebook, Anatomy of a Design: How to Think Like a Digitizer and Become a Better Embroiderer where I take you under the hood of an embroidery design and show you what to look for.

18. NOT USING QUALITY PRODUCTS.

Cheap thread shreds, looks ratty and may even bleed or fade during laundering. Old, dried out thread or poorly stored thread can also break and shred excessively.

Cheap, low quality needles likewise are no bargain.

Unless you sew the same types of designs on the same types of fabric, you’ll need a range of stabilizers and in this case, many of the various brands are made in a small handful of factories so there won’t be a lot of difference in basic products. In general, larger spools, cones, tubes and packages cost less per yard than tiny “sample” size versions, so buy larger sizes on products you use the most of.

As odd as it seems, some machines just “prefer” some thread brands over others, especially with the “more special” specialty threads. Find a brand you like that works well on your machine for the type of work you do but don’t be afraid to experiment.

I get into all sorts of different types of thread like metallics, glow-in the-dark, wooly blends, and color changing threads in my Craftsy class, Thread Savvy.