Tension Issues With Sewing Machines — Common Mistakes
Properly tensioning a sewing machine can be one of the harder things to master when you start sewing. Tension issues on your sewing machine can even trouble DIYers who’ve been sewing for years. In these two videos on tensioning your Ultrafeed® Sewing Machine, we’re going to discuss some common mistakes or errors new Ultrafeed owners make when trying to tension their machines. We’ll show you how to fix these mistakes so you can get your machine tensioned correctly and get back to sewing with no further issues. Let’s discuss.
Our Ultrafeed tension plates have great tension when the presser foot is down, but when you lift the presser foot up they become loose. This means you should be threading your machine when the presser foot is up so you can get the thread threaded and set correctly between the tension plates.
In our first video, we discuss the proper way to thread your Ultrafeed machine. We’ll show you how NOT to thread the machine so that you can see what happens when you thread it incorrectly. You should not thread the machine with the presser foot down or the thread will not be fully pulled into the core between the tension plates and will result in uneven tensioning on the back side of your fabric assembly. Watch this video to learn the proper way to thread your Ultrafeed so you can sew perfectly tensioned stitches every time.
In our second video on common tension issues, we’ll talk about a mistake that’s actually very easy to make — both for new and experienced sewers. In fact, in our video, Matt Grant makes this mistake himself — unintentionally! When turning a fabric assembly, or any time you start and stop sewing, it’s very common to forget to lower the presser foot if you raised it to turn your assembly or pull your assembly from under the presser foot. If you don’t drop the presser foot, when you begin sewing your top stitches will look fine, but if you turn your assembly over there will be a horrible looking, tangled nest of loose thread. So, remember to drop your presser foot before you begin sewing again to avoid this common tension mistake.
We hope our videos on operator error tension mistakes have helped you figure out any issues you’ve been having with your Ultrafeed. Let us know in the comments if you have any questions or if these videos didn’t answer your tension issues. You can also call, email or online chat with us. We’re happy to help!