To my non-sewing friends I thought I'd explain.

A thread chicken is a "game" sewists play when they can see the thread is running out, but they keep going regardless hoping to finish before the thread does run out.

Modern sewing machines use thread on top and the bottom. The bottom thread is wound from the main spool onto a tiny plastic spool called a bobbin.

The bobbin is in a casing under the sewing machine foot, so not visible while you're sewing.

https://mastodon.ie/@jjcelery/116189242628972318

JJ Celery (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image You wouldn't take me for a person who enjoys extreme sports but I just played - and won - bobbin chicken on a buttonhole :d20: #sewing

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Therefore playing bobbin chicken is a more extreme version of thread chicken: you won't know if you won or not until you're finished sewing the seam and check underneath. You can't usually tell you ran out while you're sewing.

Now onto buttonholes. Some machines have buttonholes done in several steps, but mine has a one-step buttonhole. This makes it faster and more consistent, but also makes it impossible to resume making one if you ran out of either main or bobbin thread.

#sewing

No, if you fuck up a buttonhole you have to start over. You must undo all the stitches, and then hope you didn't damage the fabric, and try again.

The buttonholes are made out of tiny stitches that are very very close together and it's A ROYAL PAIN IN THE ARSE to undo them. It's min 20 mins of work. You should do everything to never have to do that.

So playing chicken on a bobbin thread you can't see run out, on a stitch that will take you forever to fix?

Brave or very, very stupid.

#sewing

@jjcelery or very optimistic
@artcollisions sometimes being overly optimistic is quite comparable with stupidity 😂
@jjcelery true. And yet.