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Okay daft question I know! But I need to know. Up until recently when starting thread I'd use 2 strands, put it through the needle, tie a knot onto the needle to secure it, and anchor down the end with my stitches over it. But then I found amazing sites with tips like this! And on my next project I'm going to start trying the loop method.

My question is about the floss through the needle end though. Normally I tie it on but I don't want to do that any more. But how do you prevent it from slipping through and the needle falling off if nothing is holding it there? I'd be worried every time I pulled the thread through the fabric for stitching since I pull on the needle I'd unthread it each time..

I hope that makes sense lol.

The thread shouldn't just fall out of the needle. I can't remember ever having that problem even when dropping the needle to let the thread unwind. I use the loop method constantly. You should be just fine.

I only tie metallic threads to the needle, because they are naturally badly behaved. Regular floss or silk stays threaded in my experience, until the length gets very short. OK, sometimes you have to check and pull a bit more through the eye as you go along, but that's par for the course. Do you use a long enough length of floss?

*goes over to stitching to check something* Ah, now I see that when I am stitching and either put the needle down into the fabric or pull it up from underneath I'm holding the needle between two fingers, while balancing the eye (and thread) on the pad of my middle finger. So no slipping of thread. Didn't even know I was doing it.

What you have to remember is that once threaded you pull the needle nearly to half way along the thread and fold the thread where it goes through the eye. If you have your needle pointing upwards the free end of the thread should hang down to an inch or so above the fabric (that is once you have started with your away waste knot). As you workyou slide the needle along the thread towards the free end. This reduces wear on the thread caused by the needle. Fasten off just before there is no longer enough thread to keep it on the needle.

There is a tutorial here http://www.howcast.com/videos/163093-Ho ... le-by-Hand" target="_blank but For embroidery you want the longest possible tail to reduce too much wear at any one point on the thread.

What size needle are you using? The only reason I can think for worrying about that is that your needle is too big for two strand of floss. I usually use a 28 or at the most a 26 when working with two strand, I always loop start and never have this problem unless I am stitching with a silly short piece of thread