How do sewing machines work?

Factual Questions
1

I can visualise tying a knot, with two ends of two pieces of string, but how can a machine do it with only one end?

2

you know, i never thought about this.

good question.

3

Here is a neat page showing exactly how a sewing machine makes its stitches.

4

Thank you, Q.E.D.! You’ve provided me with the answer in a way I can at last understand!

5

There are other animations here (forgive the advertising banners) showing chain stitch and lock stitch styles with the threads in colour.

6

Just a note for Netscape users. The link posted by by Q.E.D. is not HTML compliant and will not display in current Netscape browsers (and probably a lot of others). You will need to use Internet Explorer. You’d think people at M.I.T. would be on top of these things. (Sigh)

7
      • The way most sewing machines work is not that they tie two ends together, but that they stick one loop through the fabric, and then stick another loop through the first, and then pull the first loop tight. That is the reason that under some circumstances one end of the thread can break, and the entire seam can be pulled out one stitch after the other.
  • I dunno what it’s called, but there is one type of sewing machine that has a small spool of thread (shuttle) and throws it back and forth underneath the fabric, as the loops of thread get pushed through from the top–so that the bottom thread gets inserted through all the loops. It is far more resistant to unraveling than the regular home-type sewing machine stitching. You normally only see this type of stitching in heavy-duty critical applications; I noticed once that my climbing harnesses used it.
    ~
8

DougC: that sounds like a serger. Most home sewers don’t have them because a good one is very, very expensive. A serger is used to hem invisibly, among other things - check out a skirt hem for instance; most of them are serged rather than sewn.

9

Yah. Here’s the cause of the trouble:
<meta HTTP-EQUIV=“Content-Type” CONTENT=“text/html; charset=windows-1252”>
<meta NAME=“GENERATOR” CONTENT=“Microsoft FrontPage 3.0”>
<meta NAME=“Template” CONTENT=“ScanME:Applications:Microsoft Office 98:Templates:Web Pages:Blank Web Page”>

Sorta makes you want to run out and buy some Microsoft -software, doesn’t it?

10

Side note - if you want to consider machines which actually do tie knots, get some farmer to let you look a hay baler which makes twine-tied bales.

11

For me the problem is the file is name *.htm-1. If I save it to disk and rename it to *.htm it works fine. So I do not think that the page is incorrect html.

12

Is the shuttle hook attached to anything? If so, how come the cotton doesn’t get caught on the “axle”?