How to Clean Your Sewing Machine

My sewing machine (Dolores) started acting really weird recently so I knew it was time to finally do a post on how to clean your sewing machine.

This isn’t a normal tutorial because every sewing machine is a little different in terms of what you can get to and how, but I hope it will encourage you to learn what you can easily do to clean and maintain your sewing machine at home.

How Often Should You Clean Your Machine?

The first question we need to get out of the way is how often to clean your sewing machine. I can guess the answer is at least more often than you’re doing it now, but if you ask the Internet you’ll get widely varying answers.

I’ve seen everything from that you should clean and oil your machine weekly (!) if you use it every day, up to once or twice a year, though I think that was more of a recommendation for getting maintenance from a sewing machine repair center if you have one of those handy.

The most common “rule” I found was that you should do a basic sewing machine cleaning after every 8 to 10 hours of sewing, or definitely after you’ve completed a big project (whatever counts as a big project).

I’ll admit to being the sort of person who only cleans my machine when it starts acting up, but I think at least quarterly would be a great practice if I could manage it.

How Do I Know What/How to Clean My Sewing Machine?

Here again the advice can be pretty variable because it depends a little bit on your machine and how much you can take apart/easily access to clean your sewing machine.

I want to say consult the manual for your sewing machine to see what it recommends for cleaning, but bear in mind this might not be all the helpful.

All the manual for my sewing machine recommends is dusting the bobbin case. It doesn’t even say anything about oiling it!

(This may be because the machine is from a time when sewing machine shops existed and consumers weren’t trusted to do regular maintenance themselves. I hope newer machines give you better advice.)

You can also search online for a video that shows someone cleaning your particular machine if you don’t want to just go at it blindly.

What Should I Use to Clean My Sewing Machine?

You’ll need a few basic tools to clean your sewing machine, including:

• short screwdrivers that fit the screws on your machine — my machine came with a flat head but not a Phillips (or at least I can’t find it if it did) so I bought a set of short screwdrivers that live near my sewing machine
• a small paintbrush or brush with a bulb air blower for cleaning out dust and some long tweezers if you have them
• a little tray or bowl for holding all your parts (you’ll thank me later)
• sewing machine oil

A little more about a couple of these, or more accurately about what you don’t want to use when cleaning your sewing machine.

First, there’s some debate about whether it’s OK to use canned air on a sewing machine. Some people swear by it, because it allows you to get into places you wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach without taking your machine apart more than you may be able to.

Others say that the propellant used in canned air can cause condensation inside your machine, which can in turn rust metal parts inside. There’s also an argument that the air just pushes lint and threads further into the machine where you’ll never be able to reach them.

I have been known to use it occasionally (like maybe twice ever) on places I couldn’t otherwise reach, but I know I shouldn’t. You probably shouldn’t, either.

Second, do you really need special oil for your sewing machine? Yes. This mineral oil is thin and clear and won’t stain, and it’s formulated to work with sewing machines. The bottles tend to come with long applicators that make it easy to get the oil where you need it, too.

Don’t use other oils or lubricants you might already have at home such as engine oil, blade oil or WD-40.

How to Clean Your Sewing Machine

So how do you actually clean your sewing machine? Here’s what I do for my Janome 6125, and the general guidelines should apply to most sewing machines.

First you should do all of this with the machine turned off and unplugged. (This is a little do as I say not as I do because mine was on for the first couple of steps. But really do.)

Remove the needle and the presser foot. You should probably go ahead and replace the needle while you’re here, so you can throw this one away.

Remove the bobbin cover and bobbin or whatever situation your bobbin is in.

Remove the plate that surrounds the feed dogs if you have one that’s removable.

Here I also removed something I’m not sure what to call so that I could remove the part that holds the bobbin. Now would be a good time to suggest that you take pictures as you go, too, so you have a reference for how to put things back. Also use that plate or tray to collect all the things you remove.

Use your paint brush or other brush to remove as much dust, lint, threads, etc. as you can. If you have a bulb blower (not compressed air) you can use that, too, but again be wary of the potential for blowing debris further into your machine.

Oiling Your Machine

Once you’ve taken everything apart, it’s time to oil your sewing machine. Now you probably don’t actually have to take it all apart to reach where the oil goes (I would just have to take out my bobbin) but you might as well do it while it’s even easier to access.

Again, this is a thing where your machine might recommend oiling in different places. My machine’s manual doesn’t address oiling at all, so I just oil this one spot in the bobbin case that looks like a little (very dry at this moment) sponge. It’s circled in blue above.

It should just take a couple of drops, but the wick should be moist here so if it’s super dry you might need a little more. Give it a minute to soak in but wipe off any excess if you apply too much.

How often to oil? Here again I’ve heard suggestions all over the map, from after every project to a couple of times a year. The general guideline seems to be after every three or four bobbins, or when your machine starts to get noisier than usual.

If you can see that the area you oil is totally dry, or you’re cleaning and you touch it and it’s dry, then you need more oil. And again you shouldn’t have to take your whole machine apart to reach this spot so that’s no excuse not to do it more often.

Finishing Cleaning Your Sewing Machine

Now that your sewing machine is as clean as you can get it, it’s time to put things back together in the order in which you took them apart. Refer to your photos if you need to know how something goes back together.

Replace your needle with a new needle and put the presser foot back on.

Thread the machine and insert the bobbin.

Grab some scrap fabric, turn on the machine and make sure it’s running smoothly before you start a new project.

And maybe set a calendar reminder for three months from now so you can clean your sewing machine again?

How often do you clean and oil your sewing machine? Have you ever? I’d love to hear about it.