This mini tutorial comes to you thanks to Becky Stern! While Becky was working on her iPhone gloves tutorial, she came over and asked if we had any conductive thread. Luckily, we had a bunch of cone samples of thread and yarn. The good news is we had tons of thread, the bad news is that they were in 1 lb cones and Becky wanted to sell small amounts.

She had previously used a 'card' such as used for embroidery floss, but it takes a long time to wind those by hand and she wanted to get these made quick! Thats when she realized that you can buy a bobbin winding machine and pick up plastic bobbins from any sewing shop.

A bobbin is the little mini-spool of thread that goes on the bottom of a sewing machine, they can hold ~100 ft of standard thread. Often times a sewing machine comes with a bobbin winding mechanism, so that you can wind bobbins as necessary. There are also machines that you can buy that will do a super-fast job of winding bobbins on their own.

Machine

Becky went all out and got a Baby Lock EPBW1 bobbin winder. This is a really pro machine, easy to use and incredibly fast!

Simply place the cone or big spool on the left hand holder. Pull the thread thru the lifter, and down to the right. Thread the end into a bobbin, and snap it into the bobbin holder. Snap the lever down, and press the button on the bottom right. The machine will spool the thread on until it fills the bobbin and automatically stop. Nice!