If you want to take in waists, or even create new items of clothing, it's time to get a machine. But first, how to thread a sewing machine?

The spool pin holds a thread spool on a homeowner machine but it serves as a guide on an industrial. Pass the thread through the upper hole first, from back to front (toward you).

White Family Rotary treadle sewing machines are well-made and easy to operate – but the hand wheel operates backward of other treadles. Modern bobbins can be used, if one extra step is taken ...

The bobbin is wound with the thread that will make up the underside of a machine stitch. Machines have either a top drop-in style of bobbin (like the one shown), or a front-loading bobbin.

Beneath the needle (as the GIF shows at a very slowed down speed) a hook rotates, capturing the thread from above and looping it around another thread, this one reeling from the bobbin below. The ...