Comments by "TheEvertw" (@TheEvertw) on "The Surprising Genius of Sewing Machines" video.

I have been wondering for 50 years how these machines worked. The part that had me stumped was how they managed to reliably capture the thread, because that is exactly the problem you described with mimicking human-made stitches. The thread needs to be reliably captured and then released again. I didn't realize that it would naturally loop when the needle is withdrawn a little bit, and that by passing very close to the needle that loop can be caught. Thanks for explaining this mystery!
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