This is very, very basic, but something I didn't know to do when I first started sewing, and I got thread nests there. It almost made me give up sewing. Do you know to hold the thread tails straight back behind the needle (away from you) when you first start sewing a seam? I've never seen an operator manual tell you to do this, but they should. If you are new to sewing, and no one in your immediate family sewed before you (like me in my family!), you don't know to do that!