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Needles – What the Home Sewer Needs to Know

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The Right Needle for Every Application

One of the questions we are most frequently asked is “What type of needle should I use?” Another is “What do the numbering systems mean?” We hope this document will help shed some light on this somewhat obscure subject.

Needle Types

The type of needle needed for sewing on knits is much different from the type that will perform well with tightly woven cotton. The sewing machine needle is made up of various basic elements that are configured into different needle designs to suit specific applications. The basic elements are the shank, the blade with one or two grooves, and the point with the eye.

Shank: The main variables affecting the home sewer are diameter (needle size) and flexibility (amount of deflection). The size of the needle determines the size hole that is made in the fabric and how big the eye can be (40% of the diameter of the needle). Thicker threads will require larger needles.

Deflection is a factor when sewing thick, dense, and heavy fabrics and many layers of fabric. A ‘Denim’ needle is made to be more rigid, and to deflect less when going through these fabrics. There are one or two grooves on the back of the shaft, and usually the front as well. When the ‘hook’ comes up from the bobbin case to catch the needle thread, it catches the thread from the groove on the back of the needle.

Blade: Features on the needle blade include the ‘scarf,’ which is the indention about the eye of the needle.

Point with eye: There are several types of points, as well as different eye designs, for particular applications.

Changing Times

Until the advent of synthetic knits in the 1950s and 1960s, needles generally had a sharp point. When home sewers began sewing on knit and double-knit fabrics in the ‘60s and ‘70s with sewing machine needles designed for cotton, they often found that their fabric snagged and/or developed ‘runs’ near the seams. For this reason, a more rounded point or ‘Ball-Point’ needle was developed. Instead of piercing and damaging the fiber, the ball point allows the needle to part the fibers to form the stitch. In the last few decades, the new owner of a home sewing machine would most likely find their machine equipped from the factory with a ‘Universal’ needle. A Universal needle is not as rounded as a ball-point, but more rounded than a ‘Sharp.’ The intent of the Universal needle is to be able to sew on the widest possible variety of fabrics with a single needle. Many home sewers do not change their needles on a regular basis, so the Universal needle seems a good compromise from that standpoint. Many sewing machine technicians have stories about original needles still being on a machine after several years – or decades – of sewing! Your results will be better when you match a specific needle to the task at hand whenever possible.

Needle Sizing Systems

With the development of many different specialized industrial machines in the 20th century, as many as 4,000 different needle systems were developed with each system being made in up to 15 different sizes. Because there was no standardization, it often happened that the same basic needle type had various designations. In May 1953 a metric size designation under the abbreviation NM was introduced to replace the 40 or so different size designations in use at that time. This “Number Metric” indicates the diameter of the needle blade in hundredths of a millimeter measured above the scarf or the short groove, but not at any reinforced part of the blade. A sewing machine needle with a blade diameter of 0.80 mm therefore corresponds to NM 80 and a needle with a blade diameter of 1.30 mm to NM 130.

In the United States, we commonly see needles labeled with two measurements separated by a slash. The first number is the old Singer needle sizing standard, the second number is the NM designation. A 12/80 needle is simply the same needle measured by two different systems. The general needle system in use for household sewing machines is the system 130/705 H. The international system designation is also 130/705 H (H = Hohlkehle in German, meaning ‘with scarf’). Also, ‘Zwei’ is two and ‘Drei’ is three in German, to explain the ‘ZWI’ and ‘DRI’ in the needle numbering of double and triple needles. Household needles of system 130/705 H all have a flattened shank for perfect positioning of the needle in the needle bar and in relation to the point of the hook. This system of needle fits nearly every machine manufactured for home use in the last forty years.

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