Content warning: this story contains graphic descriptions of a sewing injury.

This cautionary tale haunts me like a ghost of sewing past but I think it’s time I share the story. 

New Year’s Eve, 2019. Seated in my living room, using my ironing board for a table, I started sewing a quick jacket for NYE dinner. It was a simple jacket made from sparkly black fabric, with colorful metal strands woven throughout. It smelled like tinsel and shined like a disco ball – the perfect NYE fabric!

I chose to sew in the living room so I could enjoy my day off with my husband while I work on my project. We were watching episodes of Maury, with paternity results and lie detectors. The best day-off TV.

The jacket, which I started in the morning, was going quickly. It was near lunch time and I had only the left sleeve cuff to sew. As you may know, when you sew a sleeve cuff, you must sew and turn. Sew a couple inches, turn the cuff, sew again…until it’s finished. I started in on the last cuff, a mere 7 inches to sew.

Suddenly, I felt my heart racing. I felt nervous, a strange, imposing feeling. For a moment, I sat back and took some deep breaths, then decided it was nothing. I should have listened to this intuition better.

Returning to my work, I sew and turn. Sew and turn. Sew and…as I’m turning, I look away from the machine. My foot hasn’t left the pedal yet. It’s a split second.

My machine screeches, halts, beeps a warning at me. Bewildered, I look back at the needle.

It’s gone, broken, the shaft laying on the throat plate of my machine. I feel a throbbing pain in the index finger of my left hand and run to the bathroom. There’s a tiny half-moon mark on my fingernail. I run it under cool water as my husband rushes over.

“I hit my finger”, I say as I douse the wound with rubbing alcohol, “it’s okay, it’s okay. It’s not bleeding.” I slump to the bathroom floor, dizzy with an intense ringing in my ears. He takes me to the couch and I ask for an ice pack and water. While he’s in the kitchen, the ringing subsides but everything sounds muffled and I’m sweating.

When the sound returns and I come back to my senses, I examine the machine. The upper part of the needle is still in the machine, the shaft on the throat plate. But I can’t find the tip. I pull the bobbin out, shine a light inside the machine. No needle. I look back at my finger, at the painful protrusion on my finger pad, and the muffled sweaty feeling returns.

“It’s still in my finger,” I gasp, “we have to go to the hospital.”

My husband drives me to the local Urgent Care and they take me in. The doctor says he will try his best, but if he can’t remove the needle I’ll have to go to the ER. He pumps my finger full of Novocain and gets to work.

To his credit, he tried to cause as little additional damage as possible. He delicately cut my finger with a scalpel and used huge forceps to try and pull the needle out.

It’s a 70/30 Schmetz Microtex needle, quite small and slippery. He cuts and pulls several more times until finally, the needle is out! Blood starts gushing like a volcano, so he cauterizes the wound with silver nitrate. Ouch.

With my newly bandaged finger, I go home. I had only a couple of inches left on my jacket, so I finished it. And I wore it later that night! RAWR! Dinner was delicious, even though  my finger was throbbing the whole time. 

Here is a pic from the night-of; I look SO tired! In the second pic, you can see the silver burn on my finger.