Picking Thread Thickness for Hemming Pants

Video Transcript

" Hi this is Andrew on behalf of Expert Village.com and in this next clip I am going to be describing how to determine the size of the needle to use based off a couple of different factors. One you have to consider the type of material you are going to be sewing through and in the case of polyester skirt, you’ve got a pretty thick material when you have polyester. In this case it is a double layer so when you fold it to create the hem you are actually dealing with four layers of polyester. If you used a thick needle with that it would be very difficult to penetrate the material. The main determining factor of the size of the needle you use is the thickness of the thread you are using. In the case of embroidery cloth you are going to need a really thick needle because thick needles also have thicker eye holes for the thread to go through. It is going to create a larger hole which will require you to reinforce it with more thread. In the case of men’s slacks, you are dealing with material that is not going to be as thick as the polyester suit. You are going to want to use a medium sized needle as far as just penetrating through the material. In the case of silk, you are going to be using a really thin needle because you don’t need very thick thread so you are going to just want to put the tiniest hole in the material for the needle to go through and reinforce the hem with thread. The difference size needles can be seen here. Now in this case you can see the different needles, you are going to have the thickest needles with the thickest eyelids in the center and off to the two sides, you have medium sized needles with medium sized eyelids for medium sized thread. Typically that would be a standard size that I would use with most materials such as cotton and otherwise. On the sides you have the very thinnest of the needles and those are going to be more for silk blouses, silk skirts or silk in general or any other thread that you are going to use that is going to be small and the holes you put through it are going to be small as well. So the most important factor to think about when determining what size needle you are going to use is going to be the size of the thread you are going to use. Is it going to be a medium to small sized thread or a larger size thread which is determined by the material you are going to be sewing through. "