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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.