Simple Serging 101: Threading Fundamentals by Pocono Sew and Vac

Hello everyone, my name is Cathy and I'm part of the Pocono sales and education team, so I'm back and today I want to talk to you about sergers because I love searching. I make a lot of clothes, sometimes I make them at home in December. and I've even dabbled in quilting lately. I think it's the perfect machine for all those areas of sewing and today I'm going to show you how to thread a serger. Overlockers generally have a reputation for being a very difficult machine to use. and I think it's because people just don't understand it, they see all these threads and it seems very complicated when they open the doors in the front, but you know what?

If you really understand how to thread your serger it won't be a problem and you will be very happy and get many years of use out of this machine. I think what happens is people go to the store or buy the machine online and the threads are already on the machine or maybe at the manufacturer level. They may have cut the threads, but they left them in the thread step so you can just tie the color you are using. You know, that's all very well, but guess what there will be at some point. a situation where your thread breaks and then you don't know what to do and then you know what happens and I hate to see this, your serger gets put in the box that goes in the closet and it really becomes the white elephant. in the closet you know how much I hate that happening.

I don't like. I want to see people using their sergers and very happy with them too and the only way to really do that is to know how to thread your serger and get comfortable with it to complete some cool projects, so in this video I will show you how to thread your serger start to finish and I will explain a little about the serger to our customers who have purchased from us online. or in the store we will have additional videos available for you so now we will start

threading

our serger so listen up pay attention and enjoy the show let's look at some of the accessories we will need to use. our overlocker and these are accessories included with the eight thousand two D you have your two large and small screwdrivers you have your tweezers and you also have a starter pack of needles in sizes 11 and 14 and we're going to talk a little more about the details of how to use these tools as we go through the video, also additional things that you will need would be a good pair of pruning shears or sewing scissors and these may look familiar to some of you if not, you haven't been flossing. your teeth, these are philosophers and you can find them at CVS, you can find them at Walgreens and they are essential for

threading

your beacon or serger, so now we'll move on to threads and I'll explain some of the differences in threads for you, here are two brands of thread of locking that I really like and one is the maxi lock and the other is the madeira arrow lock.

We sell them in the store and I'm not trying to pressure them because we saw in the store I mean obviously if you want to make a purchase we're very happy with that but the feedback from our customers and us store employees use these threads, we like them, they don't bother us, they are not very Linty and I worry about those packages of offers that people get maybe in a physical store or buy online and when they come to class and I look at their thread I can visibly see the fluff from, you know, two or three feet away. you can see it's fluffy in some parts of the thread and then in other parts and other parts and when I see the fluff I have to ask you where you think that fluff is going to end up, it's going to end up somewhere on your serger and I like to work with relatively clean thread in quotes and these are good threads and that's why I recommend them also if you've had a serger before and are going to buy a new one, invest in four new cones of serger thread.

I don't care if they all match. I don't care if they are different colors, but what I don't like to see is when people come in and use old thread that has a nice layer of dust on it. I know what the chances are if it's been sitting around yeah it's been collecting dust it's probably an older thread you know just bite the bullet buy some new thread and throw away those old cones or just use them as hands don't put old lint in and dusty thread on your serger, go new please, it makes a difference.

Another yarn I could use is maxi lock stretch now. Personally, I haven't used maxi lock stretch yet, but I did invest, I think, in the white ones and the black ones for sewing. Of my neckwear I make a lot of knits and Marilyn said she has this yarn, she's used it and she really likes it, so I got some schools myself, so I'm going to try it, okay, let's get on with the beginning. threading our serger right now we're looking at the back of our serger and I'm standing at my table here and I want to show you on the back you're going to have the school pins, and these are the cone holders. and the cone holders will sit on the reel seat most of the time, you'll have the cones on the reel holders, but sometimes people don't realize they can take them off, so I wanted to show you that and these cones.

The stands are made to hold the yarn cones, whether it's the maxi lock or the wooden one, they just sit there and it looks a little crooked in the video, but trust me, it's on straight lines, right at the angle you're looking at , but I'm going to have four cones of thread on each of these spool holders. Now I'm going to put them here because the eight thousand two D right now is still being supplied with starter spools of thread and there isn't a whole. There is a lot of thread here, but these are the starters and not all machines are going to have starter spools.

I found out that what they have been doing is just trimming the threads at the top leaving the machine threaded so you can just tie your threads now I am NOT a big fan of that because you need to know how to thread your serger. I know people who say, oh, I've never threatened my overlocker. I always tie, well people, what happens when your thread breaks? You have to rethread it at some point, that's why I'm making this video so you always know how to thread it. You have four cones on the back of the thread because you have two needles and two shuttles.

It is very important to understand it. Almost one hundred percent of what we're going to do with this serger that you're going to do at home is going to require looping or threading your top looper here and your bottom looper here, on the left side, you have two more spools. of thread, but this is for your left needle and this is for your right needle and I will repeat that going through the left needle, the right needle, the upper looper and the lower looper, you will need to use both your upper looper and your lower looper, without However you will have your choice is to use both threads for the left needle and the right needle or just the right needle or just the left needle and I will explain these things to you as we go through the video so now I will show you how to thread your first guide of thread on your machine I realize you're not seeing much here, but I want to emphasize a really important point when you take your machine out of the box, your telescoping wand on the back will be in the down position and it's really easy, like new owner of a serger, forget to pick that up and if you forget to pick it up and you go up, you'll probably have a nasty jam and break a needle, and I say that because when my daughter was first learning how to search she would always say Oh mom, I forgot lift the rod.

I tell you before you sit down, you get up and raise the telescopic rod to the highest position, that's really important, just do it, make it a habit. to do that and then when you're done at the end of the day, you push it down, it's not hard, pull it up when you're ready. You have four thread guides on the top of the telescoping rod. You have the left needle and the right needle. guide the upper looper guide and the lower looper guide and I'll show you how to pull up on those threads so you can see the thread insert into the guide.

I'm going to take out my reel right now and put it back in. On the cone, pick up the left needle thread, which is the one on the far left, and place it right through this little guide slot in the front. I'm going to take the thread from my right needle and let me pull the thread out. here, okay, put it back on and I'm going to pull it up and put it through the right needle guide. I'm going to get the thread tail out of the top looper bring it up and through the top looper guide and then my last spool of thread here this is my bottom looper I'm going to get the thread tail put it back in bring it up don't tangle the threads up and up and to the right on that guide so they all hang over the top of that telescoping rod right through that slot you will see there are additional holes and in your manual it tells you how to insert the thread into that second hole if you need more tension on your thread and honestly I don't know anyone who has needed to use that second hole, but I personally have never used it because I don't feel like it needed additional tension, so in my opinion the second hole is not used very often. often, so just putting it across the top is going to be perfect for most things you're going to do and my safe guess is to say one hundred percent of what you're going to do.

I like to run each thread through the guides from the beginning because I'm standing and so I do all my work standing up and then I'm going to sit down and thread this saw fed by this machine, so let's watch the next video and we'll look at the guides that I will continue. to tell you how to prepare your machine before you even start threading it, we're almost ready to thread our machine, but I want to give you a little overview of the parts of your machine right now, here, these doors, this is a door here on the side left and this is your front cover you slide it to the right and it just opens in the down position and don't be scared by what you see inside it's actually not that complex it's actually very easy once you start using it . your serger and you get used to it, but I want to show you looking forward, you have a thread guide up here and when we thread this part, I'll zoom in on this area so you can see that a little better and your color. the coding actually starts at the top here and there are colored dots at the top of this guide bar right here here these are the tension dials and you'll notice they're different colors because everything is color coded so threading is a little easier for you. so there's an orange dot here for the left needle that corresponds to the left needle tension dial.

This one here is a blue dot and it corresponds to the blue tension dial and that would be for the right needle. There is also a red dot on the top of this guide bar that corresponds to the red tension dial which would be your top looper and there is a green dot on the top right here that corresponds to your green tension dial which is your bottom looper looking towards the right side of your machine, this right here is your stitch length and it's currently set to 3, which is the average stitch length. You can go up to 4 or you can go to 1.

I realize you probably see an R right there and I'll explain that as we continue, but I'm going to set it back to 3. Your differential feed here is set to 1. If it's not set at 1, turn the dial forward or backward either clockwise or counterclockwise to ensure that the differential feed is set to a zero point and your average differential is not It doesn't go up or down and we're going to make our samples out of cotton and we're not going to do much with the differential in this video segment, not yet, anyway, your steering wheel is down here on the right and below you have the on/off button. and you also have the power cord port on the front.

Here you will see some red dots and you will see the thread path for each individual thread and how it should be inserted into your machine in those guides this would be for your left needle and notice it is color coded orange this would be for your right needle it is color coded with blue, the upper looper is red and its lower looper is green and it tells you the exact path to follow to thread your machine and you know, it sounds very easy and it really is not difficult. People look at a serger and instantly get scared. scared be confident in yourself be confident in your threading ability here because you are not going to have these problems because I am going to help you along the way I want to tell you something about a serger, the left needle is easy to thread to the right The needle is easy of threading passing through those threads.

Top threader is very easy to thread. It's always the bottom looper that really draws people in, so that's where we really need to pay attention and you need to thread your machine in a specific order. Through that, when you look to the front, here you have the presser foot lever on the back of the machine, like a sewing machine. These are snap-on feet. My head was split before so it can be removed and I like it. I take my foot off when I'm threading my machine so I'm going to leave it aside for now that's my preference over people leaving it on.

I think it's a little easier to thread the needles if the foot isn't here. In this part that stands out,extreme, but of course I can't find it now because it's probably in my folder at the store, so floss writers are the best option. they're cheap they're easy there's a lot of them in a pack probably like 50 in a pack or thirty two packs something like that and they're also easy to lose so it's nice to have a pack of these around what you want what I do is I take out enough thread because we're going to put the thread through the loop part of our needle threader, so I'm going to take my thread, take the tip and put it right through the loop, pull it out and I'm going to pull out about four inches.

Now I have that thread in the loop and now I want to take the flat part here, flip it over and this is what I'm going to do. I put it in my thread guide and I'm going to run my finger through the thread guide on the back, like not through it, but hitting it so I can run my fingers through it when it comes out the other side and bring it out. making sure it doesn't catch on anything over here and notice I'm pulling it out over this bar here, okay that's important so I'm going to pull it out the other side and that was easy and that's actually considered. to be a tricky part, oh look, it actually got caught on something here, so get it out, they always say to double check, we don't want it to get caught in here, get out and that's the first of three tricky parts I want to tell you about. now.

To do the next guide I will have to rotate the machine and tilt the camera a little differently, so let's look at the next step, are you ready for step two of this three step bottom looper challenge? I know you are and we're looking at the left side of our machine. Now I opened the side door and we're looking in this area here because there's something we need to see, we're not looking at the bottom. looper we have to move the lower looper arm to the left to do this. I'm going to turn my steering wheel towards me until I see my lower looper arm swinging out and I'm going to use my pliers here here's the lower looper. arm right here, okay, you can see it moving.

I'm just going to turn the wheel so you can see exactly what I'm aiming for and I want to take it to the leftmost position and I'm going to zoom in here because Actually, there's a green guide right here that you need to look for and we need to pass our thread to through this guide to come out the other side and it's not difficult, it's not difficult at all, it's just a little bit of It's a challenge and I know you're up for it, so let's work on threading this thread guide. Okay, actually, this is a very difficult angle to film, but I want to show you that my thread comes out from this side if you look closely.

You can see that guide that is appearing. I'm moving my thread for you and we want to move it from that guide to this green guide that's right here, you see the green there, that's what you're looking for. and there's a little hole there and you want to put the thread coming out of that guide we made earlier back into the hole in your bottom looper. Now I'm going to zoom in at a different angle so you can see this a little bit. a little bit better and we have a good understanding of what we're doing so we have a little bit better angle of this green guide and this is one of those times where I wish I had one of those new daytime running lights on And that there's like two lights. and they can be divided into a B.

I almost walked home with one a couple of weeks ago and now I wish I had because I have better lighting here for you, but here this is the guide and it's in green, there's a little hole right above it. and now the tip of my tweezers is in that hole where the tip of my tweezers is that's where I want to put the thread now how to do it because when I try to do it with my fingers it just doesn't work very well So this is where I put my thread in the loop of my floss threader and I have about a 10 inch tail to make sure my threads don't get tangled in this area.

We know it came straight out of a guide and I don't want anything to get tangled and now we're just going to put it right in that hole and push it in making sure the thread doesn't come out of the feed teeth because that can happen if you're not paying attention to the thread. . it'll come out through the feed teeth, you'll see that little flat part of the blue thread threader and it'll come out right here, you don't want it coming out the other side and I actually see it coming out. so I'm going to put my hand here and then I'm just going to make it a little bit, but I'm going to leave it there so I can change the angle and you can see where it comes out again, it's not difficult, but it's a little bit more challenging and it really helps to have good lighting, so just make sure you have the right lights for the task at hand.

Okay, right now we're looking at that blue threader that comes out and it doesn't go all the way to the dog feeder, it comes out to the right, I'm going to pull this and that's where it's going to pull out my thread and I just want to make sure that I have enough thread for here, about ten inches coming out and the next thing I'm going to do What I have to do is turn my steering wheel towards me because I have to see my lower anchor. I can't thread it if it's hidden under the feed teeth, so I'm going to turn my flywheel towards me and pay close attention to this. next part because it's very important I'm going to wait until my bottom looper appears now your bottom looper is the one in the front east here and I want to make sure that my bottom looper has almost four minks look at that little camera there it's moving to you, my bottom looper is formed and If you put it on top of the top looper at the back, you can't insert the thread through the eye of the bottom looper and have it go under the top looper, it has to go through, that's very critical and important, and if you don't get it. right, you're going to have a nasty jam every time, so we've got that position right.

I'm going to take my floss threader and I'm going to try to put it through that hole, it goes in, it comes out the back and I'm just going to grab that with my fingers and pull it through that wasn't too difficult, you just have to remember how these loops on the front crisscross how they should be placed so that the bottom loop thread when it goes through the eye is above the top looper in the back, okay, and I'm going to push both looper threads back towards the right side of the machine. Now it was that difficult, no it wasn't, but threading is very specific in how you have to do it and you have to do it right and that bottom looper is the most complicated.

Some other overlockers, the looper threading for that bottom looper is a little easier, sometimes the looper mechanism will come out so you don't have to go. We're going to the left side, but those are overlockers that will typically cost a few hundred dollars more, so we're at a price point where it's a little more challenging but very, very doable. Let's move on to the needle threads. Now is the time to focus. in the threads of our needle and remember that the threading sequence of our serger is first the upper looper followed by the lower looper, then we are going to go with the right needle and the left needle and there is a reason because I know that in class I have said left needle right needle, but depending on the latest thread guide for your needles, I want to prevent your threads from tangling, so first let's make the right needle.

I'm going to close the side of my machine right here because we're done with the bottom area. now we're just working from the top the right needle is going to be the blue thread guide so I'm going to take the thread coming out of the guide bar and I'm going to take it with my fingers and again you should be used to this now to thread it through dental and then I'm going to put it under this floss guide right here because it says on the front of our machine that we have to put it under this floss guide and I realize you might not be.

You can see the front area down here really well, but I'm just telling you this is really easy, so we're going to put it right on this thread guide here, okay, and then you have another hook here that fits from left to right. and then this is the reason why I'm using the right needle first and then the left because if I put my right needle in, I notice how it's going to slide here and sit on the right, so if I put my right needle in first, it's just going to prevent any kind of tangle there now I want to get a nice tip so I'm going to take my scissors and just cut them diagonally get a little tip there and then see how well my machine threads.

I just want to very carefully move my needles up, just a little bit, being careful not to rearrange my hook threads and I'm just trying to get it through the eye of the right needle and this is always the hardest part on those needles. They're close together, okay, so I'm finally going to thread my right needle. I'm just going to go through that with my pliers and put it right in the back along with my other threads, pull that back and when I go through my needle threads, I want to make sure it doesn't get caught in the knife in the front, make sure that the threads don't get tangled, so I go through it slowly and I'm fine, now the left needle will be almost exactly the same as the one I'm going to take. the thread from my left needle take it out, put it through the tension guide, put it in this guide here, put it down and slide it from right to left on that hook and then put it through the guide right above the needles and now I'm going to thread my needles again and unfortunately it always holds me back forever I need to get a good needle threader but that's in my goodie bag and in my car so I make sure I don't forget it when I go to work. from front to back and as always you know that when someone is filming you or you are doing this in front of a client, it never goes as fast as you want.

I think I did well, let me try to get by with my tweezers, hopefully. I've got enough, yeah, I did it right, so I'm going to pull this back, sticking out from the front, making sure everything is up. Right now, I see if that thread is really in front of my knife. I want to take it out carefully and then make sure it doesn't get tangled and retrieve it. It's always about making sure nothing bad happens when you thread the serger and voila, the serger is threaded. Now we need to do a test stitch to see if everything has been threaded correctly.

Now I'm just going to take a little look here. Everything seems to be threaded correctly. Nothing seems to catch on anything. My lower looper thread reaches above the upper looper bar at the back. Everything's fine. We are ready to set our tensions and begin to escalate. Okay, we're on to the next step. Let's close the front door. Let's set our tensions to three. Now you'll see. how there are points next to it between the four and the three and the three and the two the three is average and I recommend going with the average setting and we'll see what that looks like on a test piece of fabric and we'll set it to three they're all going to be in three for a four thread overlock now why do they call it four thread overlock as overlock?

You're using four threads, you're using two needles and two shuttles and 2 + 2 obviously equals 4, so 4 thread overlock. and I always tell people to make sure you turn the steering wheel towards you to test your stitch. Now I realize I haven't set foot yet, but I want to bring this a little closer to you and me. I'm going to turn the steering wheel towards me just by lightly pressing my threads on the back and I'm actually going to open this up so you can see what's happening here. I want you, as a beginner, to notice what those points look like. forming in the stitch finger right here this here in front of the gentleman that is a stitch finger it's like a little finger that sticks out and I always tell people that if you don't thread your serger correctly and you're going to put your foot on the accelerator pedal and in jams, you know, I don't want you to risk throwing your serger out of time, so I always tell them to type, turn the handle towards themselves about ten times because if you don't have a correct thread it's probably going to get stuck in those first ten rotations and I see a lot of stitches forming on the stitch toe, that's good, that's what I want, so now I'm going to put the foot back being careful not to catch any of those threads underneath. the foot itself, okay, I have to put it right there, it snaps into place and the tensions are set, the foot is on.

I turned my steering wheel about ten times towards me to make sure the points that make up my handles don't get blocked by tangled threads, I think. I'm ready, so let me get some fabric and let's see how our four thread overlock sews well on the fabric, so I'm going to close the door on my machine and if I have an excessive amount of threads, I'm just going to take it and pass it back forward over my thread cutter on the side of the machine and I have my pedal to take out my piece of fabric here so my fabric is a dark color because I want you to see what the stitch looks like and we're using white thread so I'm going to fold this in half and place the raw edges on the right side of the cover.

You can see here that there is a 5/8 inch seam allowance guide. If you are using the left and right needles or just the left needle, you will follow the line ofpoints, if you're using just the right knee, you're going to follow the solid line, so I'm going to use 5/8 of an inch seam allowance here I put my fabric under the foot. I don't have to lift the presser foot with a serger. I can always tilt it up if I want. This will tilt up or could lift the presser foot. It just depends on how thick. your fabric is fine, let's try this with my thread cutter and now let's look at this stitch, this stitch looks really, really beautiful, that's the front of your 4 thread overlock stitch, here's the back, hey, this looks great and Both the upper looper thread and the lower looper thread are joined right at the edge of the fabric.

It looks really nice and you know what I tell people. When you thread your overlocker, if you get a bad stitch right from the start, it's usually because something happened with the threading, either because you're missing a guide or maybe your thread is wrapped around something that shouldn't be necessary. wrapped around another guide, but with the tension set to 3 you should get a really good stitch, we have finished our threading lesson on how to thread adenomas 8000 2 D overlocker this lesson is applicable to several Janome overlockers in their line and I think you should You feel pretty confident threading your serger now, so I'm looking forward to some feedback from you about whether you're having a good experience with your serger and I hope all your threading goes very well.

I will have more videos in this series and how to get more out of your basic serger some of these videos will be free some will be only for our customers who purchased a machine from us. I like to reward our customer base. We have some of the best customers ever and I like to offer that as a special option. So whether you buy in-store or buy online, some of those additional videos that I develop in the future will be accessible to all customers and all of my videos will be accessible to our customers at Pocono Sewing Back.

Thanks for watching everyone, have a great day. Good luck with your surgeries and subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can see more Pocono sewing videos.