Originally Posted by
Tartan
When hand sewing, I regularly hold my work up with the thread attached and the needle hanging down. I let the thread and needle dangle until it stops spinning. The spinning is the twists that developes when hand sewing. The twists in my thread cause the thread to double back and cause knots. There is also thread wax that can help with hand sewing.
This works the same way we used to untangle our phone cords (this dates me!) by letting the hand receiver dangle by the cord until it was straight.