I’d been complaining off and on about the bad lighting in my sewing area. My husband got me a task light for my birthday which helped a lot, but when I was making a black shirt with black top stitching in the depths of winter even that wasn’t enough. I’d read about LED light strips for sewing machines, and asked for some for Christmas. And I have to say, they are amazing.

Here’s my machine with the LEDs off. You can probably just about see the LED strip wrapped around the head of the machine in front of the needle bar. The machine is on, so the built in bulb is lit. These pictures were all taken at night.

And here they are switched on. It’s so bright! It doesn’t look as blue in real life as it does in this photo, but the illumination it provides is every bit as intense. It makes such a difference. The sewing machine bulb is barely visible beside the LEDs.

Here’s a better shot of how the strip attaches to the machine. Two little stick on plastic clips came in the pack. Those are stuck to the machine, one at each end of the strip, and the strip can be slid in and out of them when I need to change thread. The strip itself also has a sticky back for attaching it permanently, but that would make it almost impossible to thread the machine.

The power cable is just laid over the top of the machine out of the way of the spools, and the switch hangs down the side.

My set of LEDs was a fairly random one off Amazon – it was marked as ‘for sewing machines’ but really there are lots of other possible uses. Highly recommended!