How to Thread a Needle

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Karen for Expert Village. Let's start our mending with learning how to thread and knot a needle for hand sewing. I have 2 threads here; I'll show you. The first thing you should do is trim off any excess with a nice sharp pair of scissors so there is no loose fibers on the end that you have a nice clean cut on your thread and then just moisten it a little bit by licking your fingers. That will make it a little bit stiff and then just look for the eye of your needle and slide that right in and when there is enough through the needle, you just pull it through. Okay and then just pull it through. Get enough thread to work with and then cut that off. Now to knot a needle for hand sewing, you want to have a pretty good thick knot so that it won't pull through the fabric and this is how you do it. You lick your finger to moisten it and you wrap the thread crossing over itself. You wrap the thread around your finger and then pinch and roll the thread off of your finger and now you are holding it tight with your thumb and you are taking your other finger and just kind of pull until you get a knot. That's a nice thick knot that won't go through a fabric. I'll show you that again. Let me cut it off and show it to you again because it is a little bit of a technique. Moisten your finger, wrap it around, pinch and roll and pinch and slide the knot. That is a nice thick knot. Another way to thread a needle is with one of these nice little needle threaders and if you have difficulty seeing, this will help you. It is a lot easier to get this wire into the needle hole than to get a piece of thread. So you slide the wire and you have a much bigger hole to put your thread through. You put your thread through like that and then you pull the wire back through and it pulls the thread through. Again, pull out as much thread as you need to work with, cut that off and moisten the finger, wrap it around crossing it over and pinch and pull it off your finger and then grab that with your other finger and just slide it along until you have a knot. You may think that looks like a messy knot but that is going to be great for holding and you always are going to hide the knot in behind the fabric. It is not going to show. So that's a nice big knot that will hold and not come out. "