Simple Serging 102: Tips & Techniques for the 4-thread Overlock Stitch

good morning everyone a perhaps is good afternoon your evening where you live my name is Kathy and I'm part of the sales and education to you here at coconut so and back in today's video segment we're going to be talking about searchers again this is

simple

surging 102 if you watch my previous videos

simple

surging 101 you know how to

thread

your serger and how to get a good 4

thread

overlock

stitch

today we are expanding on that and I'm going to teach you some

tips

and

techniques

and how to utilize that 4

thread

overlock

stitch

so let's make sure your machines are

thread

ed up we're ready to roll hello everyone welcome back to serger fundamentals simply surging 102 in this video segment I'm going to show you some of the things you can do with the 4

thread

overlock

stitch

just by changing up couple settings on your machine you should have your machine set up for the 4

thread

overlock

stitch

all your tension should be set to approximately 3 your

stitch

length should be set to 3 in your differential over here on the side should be set at 1 what we're going to do is put our sample fabric in I have about a 12 inch long piece of fabric about 10 inches wide and I'm going to align the edge with my 5/8 of an inch seam allowance marking and I'm going to try to stay pretty much on target with that seam allowance guy but you know when I'm videotaping and talking and doing at the same time gets a little hard I'm going to

stitch

about two...

inches make sure your presser foot is down with that

stitch

length of three and now I'm going to switch my

stitch

length selector up to for another 2 inches now I'm going to turn it back to 1 and

Stitch

for about 2 inches and then turn it to number 2 and just right off the end of the bottom alright let's see how this looks ok here is where my

stitch

length was at 3.0 I can bring a little closer and then I went from 3.0 to 4.0 right here so you can see how my loopers are spaced a little farther apart gives it a slightly different appearance different appearance it's not wrong it's just a different look slightly wider

stitch

not not wider but longer

stitch

length then I moved on to a

stitch

length of 1.0 and you can see how tight that is together not wrong just a different look all together and here it is with a

stitch

length of 1 so all of these

stitch

lengths will vary and give your for

thread

overlock

stitch

an entirely different look I will show you a sample at the end of this video where I used a

stitch

length a very short

stitch

length of one with a heavier decorative

thread

on a garment that I made and it gave it the appearance that it was almost like a ribbon on the front of the garment as well as the back so you just remember think about all the potential uses that you can use but just by varying your

stitch

length on that 4

thread

overlock

stitch

another thing I want to teach you is something that everyone in my class is always gets excited about...

one of the most exciting things you can do is gather with your serger instead of a sewing machine it cuts the time in half makes it so much easier and I have a feeling that once you learn how to do this you're probably not going to want to gather too much on your sewing machine so the first thing you need to do is let me just rotate this machine to the right a little bit is on your

stitch

length just like on a sewing machine if you're going to gather if you want to use your longest

stitch

length so that's is setting up to four the next thing we're going to do is pay attention to our differential feed this knob is right below your

stitch

length and we're going to turn it up to two well actually two point five on this particular machine sometimes the numbers will vary depending on what machine you're using now what I'm going to do is just run a sample so you can see all this looks going to use approximately the five eighths of an inch seam allowance guide and let's look at our sample all right you can see how this gathered a little bit you know like oh that didn't do what I wanted it to do well hold on a second because I just want to show you what certain adjustments on your machine can do the next thing we're going to do is turn our needle tension up to about seven on both needles and then we're going to do the sample again on the other side of our fabric and let's see how it looks okay this looks great look at this just by...

adjusting our

stitch

length up to four our differential up to the highest setting and tightening our needle tensions we have a beautiful gather here now what if the gather is too long well you can just pull on your gathers and make some of those gathers just disappear off to the side okay or you can also make it more gathered but we're going to have to zoom in I'm going to show you how to adjust the gathers to make it even tighter the first thing you're going to want to do is lay the piece of fabric that you gathered onto a flat surface and take the

thread

chain and sniff this

thread

chain to about 3/4 of an inch and just throw away the excess then grab something like a tweezers or a pin and what I'm going to do is just kind of separate the

thread

s in that tail now I'm actually going to pick it up and do this because it's a little hard I'm a little far away well maybe I can do it and I'm just getting my pin into the loop because I want to untangle my chain and just try to you know work slowly but patiently at this alright guess what I am left with my two longer looper

thread

s in my two shorter needle

thread

the two shorter needle

thread

s are the ones that you want to pull to adjust your gather so I'm going to take it and let's see take those two shorter

thread

s see when I got here alright it's coming along let me find those

thread

s again to keep letting go of them as I'm filming this video so if it wasn't concerned about the...

camera it just a little bit easier to get those out of the way okay there we go and now I tighten my gathers and now I can just readjust them but it just makes it so much easier to gather your fabric using your serger and then you don't have all these yucky

thread

s at the side so third your tip on how to gather your fabric just remember don't forget to set your needle tension and your differential and your

stitch

length back to normal before you leave your machine if you're going to turn it off and then do something different tomorrow make your settings just set it up for a four

thread

overlock

stitch

so there you go let's work with cutting width now alright everyone let's talk about cutting width cutting width in the knife go hand-in-hand let's first look at our four

thread

overlock

stitch

you have your two needle

thread

s you have your upper looper

thread

so going from the needle lines up to the edge of your fabric and on the back the lower looper

thread

s extend from the needle line to the edge of the fabric so both the upper and lower looper

thread

s will meet right at the edge of the fabric on a balanced

stitch

now sometimes people look at their stations say my loops are falling off the fabric well I like a little bit of the loops falling off that is my preference but if you see an excessive amount of loops that's where you might want to go in and adjust your cutting width likewise if you find that your fabric is buckling or tunneling in the seam...

then you might want to play with your cutting width as well by moving the night so let's look at our knife open front door open up the side door and take off my foot too because then you'll be better able to see that nice okay nice is actually right here and remember we can turn the night down by pushing in that knob and rotating it to the down position let me just focus a little bit lower and I'm going to bring this nice back up and now it's in position to change the movement or the position of your knife you are rolling to use this knob right here and I'm going to rotate my knob back like going towards the back of my machine and I can't turn it anymore so it is already at the farthest position so now I'm going to rotate my knob toward me and you should be able to see that nice move a little bit see that nice moving out to the right there we go so this is what's moving as I turn the handle I'm going to turn it back again watch that nice move there we go so right now our knife is all the way in which means it's cutting off the maximum maximum amount of the fabric I'm going to put my mouse back on and let's do a sample with my knife all the way over to the left close up the door first all right about five-eighths of an inch guide and let's see how their look with the knife all the way over to the left okay it's really hugging that edge very nicely now what I'm going to do is move my knife all the way over to the...

right open up my door bring camera down a little bit and let me just rotate the knob toward me my knife is moving out to the right so now when the nice moves out to the right you're actually cutting off less fabric now I was theorized that because I'm cutting off less fabric the machine is going to try to smoosh that edge into the seam and I might get a little bit of buckling so let's try that theory out I went from one extreme to the other okay and yes if I look at this I am getting a little bit of buckling you can kind of see how it's doing a little bit of tunneling in here and there's a little bit of excess there it's going to try to put the excessive amount of fabric where it can and that's why I'm getting a little bit of tunneling you can kind of you really see it like bunching up right there so this is how I know I'm not cutting off enough of the fabric in the seam you can even see right here it's it's just tight all over the place and that is evident on both sides so let me open this up again and I am going to adjust my cutting width by moving it in more to the left bringing it back over see how it looked and actually I think it looked pretty good the first time with the knife all the way over to the right see how this looks yeah that looks pretty good too so I'm real happy with what I'm getting and I could even move it all the way over to the left if I wanted to but now I'm not getting that buckling of the...

fabric in that scene so just a quick review here I put my fabric down if my finger is the knife moving the knife off to the right cuts off less fabric moving the knife into the left cuts off more fabric and that's how you can control the cutting width of your seam so you can control those loopies that you see coming off the edge if they're excessive move the knife to the right and just move the knife accordingly test it out on some samples see what it looks like the only way you're going to get really good with turning your cutting width is to play around with that knob and just see where you're at as far as what you like in your 4

thread

or your 3

thread

overlock

stitch

alright I hope you guys are ready to do some playing with your machine I've taught you enough to really you know get going with them let's see what you can do them with those machines I've caught you several

tips

in this video on how to do different things with your 4

thread

overlock

stitch

I want you guys to play and play a lot really use them as machines become proficient with them don't forget please subscribe to us on youtube if you haven't already like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram and Twitter for the most recent updates for the store happy surging and we'll see you soon