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

good morning everyone or maybe this good afternoon or evening where you live my name is Kathy and I am part of the sales and education team here at Pocono SE andac in today's video segment we will talk about serger again, this is

simple

surging 102 yes you watch my previous video

simple

surging 101, you already know how to

thread

your serger and how to get a good four

thread

overlock

stitch

, today we will expand on that and I will teach you some

tips

and

techniques

on how to use that four thread

overlock

stitch

, so let's make sure that Your machines are threaded, we're ready to get started.

Hello everyone, welcome back to the basics of the serger, just coming up one2 in this video segment. I'm going to show you some of the things you can do. do with a four thread overlock stitch by simply changing a couple of settings on your machine, you should have your machine set up for the four thread overlock stitch, all tension should be set to about three, the stitch length should be set to three and Your differential must be greater. here on the side it should be set to one, what we're going to do is place our sample fabric.

I have about a piece of fabric that is 12 inches long and about 10 inches wide and I'm going to line up the edge with my 58 inch. seam allowance marking and I'm going to try to stay more or less on target with that seam allowance guide, but you know, when I'm shooting a video, talking and doing at the same time, it gets a little difficult. I'm going to sew. about 2 inches, make sure the presser foot is down with that stitch length of three. Now I'm going to change my stitch length dial to four, another 2 inches, now I'm going to set it back to one and sew about 2 inches. and then turn it to number two and sew right at the end of the fabric, okay, let's see how it looks okay, this is where my stitch length was 3.0 if I can get it a little bit closer and then I went from 3.0 to 4.0, right? here so you can see how my Loopers are spaced a little further apart gives it a slightly different look different look not bad it's just a different look a little wider Stitch not wider but longer Stitch length then I moved on to a stitch length of 1.0 and you can see how tight it fits, not bad, just a different look.

All together and here it is with a stitch length of one, so all of these stitch lengths will vary and give your four thread overlock stitch a completely different look. I'll show you. A sample at the end of this video where I used a very short stitch length with a heavier decorative thread on a garment I made and it gave the appearance that it was almost like a ribbon on the front of both the garment and the back, so remember to think about all the potential uses that you can use it, but just by varying the stitch length on that four thread overlock sew, another thing that I want to show you is something that always excites everyone in my classes.

One of the most exciting things you can do is sew with your overlocker 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 probably won't. you will do it. If you want to gather too much on your sewing machine, the first thing you want to do is let me rotate this machine a little bit to the right, depending on the stitch length, like on a sewing machine, if you're going to gather what you want. to use the longest stitch length, so set the setting to four, the next thing we're going to do is pay attention to our differential feed, this knob is just below the stitch length and we're actually going to turn it up to two. 2.5 on this particular machine, sometimes the numbers will vary depending on the machine you are using.

Now what I'm going to do is just run a sample so you can see what it looks like using about the 5/8 inch seam. mapping guide and let's look at our sample, okay, you can see how it came together a little bit and, well, that didn't do what I wanted it to do, wait a second because I just want to show you what certain adjustments are. your machine can do the next thing we're going to do is increase the needle tension to about seven on both needles okay and then we're going to do the swatch again on the other side of our fabric and see how it looks.

Okay, this looks great, check this out by simply adjusting our stitch length up to four, our differential up to the highest setting and adjusting the needle tensions. We have a beautiful gather here. Now, what happens if the gather is too long? Well, you can just pull your gathers. and make some of those puckers just disappear to the side, okay? or you can also make them more gathered, but we're going to have to zoom in and I'll show you how to adjust the gathers so they're even tighter. The first thing you're going to want to do is lay the piece of fabric that you gathered on a flat surface, take the string of thread, cut the string of thread to about 3/4 inch and throw away the excess and then grab some. like a pair of tweezers or a pin and what I'm going to do is just separate the threads in that tail and I'm actually going to pick it up and do this because it's a little difficult, I'm a little far away, well maybe I can do it and I'm just sticking my pin in the loops because I want to untangle my chain and try to, you know, work slowly but patiently on this, guess what I'm left with with my two longest Looper threads and my two shortest needle threads the two shortest needle threads are the ones that you want to pull to adjust your gathering, so I'm going to take it and let's see, just take those two shorter strands, look what I have here, okay, it's coming, let me.

I find those threads again. I keep letting them go while I'm filming this video so if I wasn't worried about the camera I could do this a little bit easier let me get them out of the way okay there we go and now I tighten my gathers and now I can readjust them but it makes it a lot easier to gather the fabric using the serger and then you don't have all these yucky threads on the side, so follow your advice on how to gather the fabric. just remember, don't forget to set the needle tension, differential and stitch length back to normal before you get off the machine, if you're going to turn it off and then do something different tomorrow, make your adjustments, um, just set it up for a four thread overlock stitch, so there you go, let's work with the cutting width, now okay everyone, let's talk about cutting and cutting with the knife, let's go hand in hand, let's look at our four thread overlock stitch first, you have your two needle threads, you have your The upper looper threads run from the needle lines to the edge of the fabric and on the back, the lower looper threads extend from the needle line to the edge of the fabric. fabric, so that both the top and bottom looper threads will meet right at the edge of the fabric. fabric in a balanced stitch now sometimes people look at their stitch and say my loops are falling off the fabric, well I like the loops to fall off a little bit, that's my preference, but if you see an excessive amount of loops , that's where you might want to go in and adjust the cut, likewise, if you find that the fabric is curling or tunneling in the seam, you might also want to play with the cut width by moving the knife around, so Let's look at our knife that I'm going to open. up the front door open the side door and let me take my foot off too because then you can see that knife better okay the knife is here and remember we can lower the knife by pressing that knob. and rotating it to the down position, let me focus a little bit lower, but I'm going to raise this knife again and now it's in position to change the movement or the position of your knife.

You're going to use this knob right here. and I'm going to turn my knob back like I'm going towards the back of my machine and I can't turn it any further so it's already in the farthest position so now I'm going to turn my knob towards me and you should be I can see that the knife moves a little bit, see that knife moving to the right, here we go, so this is what moves as I turn the handle. I'm going to turn it back while I watch that knife move, there we go, so right now.

Our knife is fully loaded, which means it is cutting the maximum amount of fabric. I'm going to put my foot back and let's do a swipe with my knife all the way to the left, close the door first. on the right, about a 58 inch guide and let's see what it looks like with the knife all the way to the left, okay, it really hugs that edge nicely, now what I'm going to do is move my knife all the way to the right. open my doors, turn the camera down a little bit and let me turn the knob towards me, my knife moves to the right, so now when the knife moves to the right, you're actually cutting less fabric, I would say. that because I'm cutting less fabric, the machine will try to soften that edge in the seam and I may bend it a little, so let's test that theory.

I went from one extreme to the other, okay and yeah, if you look at this, I'm sagging a little bit, you can see how there's a little tunnel forming here and there's a little bit of excess there, you're going to try to put the excess amount of fabric where you can and that is. why I'm tunneling a little bit, you can really see it like it's bunching up right there, that's how I know I'm not cutting enough fabric into the seam, you can even see right here, it's just tight everywhere and that's evident in both sides, so let me open this up again and I'm going to adjust the width of my cut by moving it more to the left, putting it back over everything okay, let's see how it looked and I actually think it looked pretty good the first time with the knife all the way to the right, let's see how it looks, yeah, that looks pretty good too, so I'm pretty happy with what I'm getting and I might even move it all around. way to the left if I wanted to, but now I'm not getting that sagging of the fabric in that seam, so just a quick check here and to bring the fabric down if my finger is the knife, moving it to the right cuts.

To remove less fabric, moving the knife to the left cuts more fabric and this is how you can control the cutting width of the seam so you can control those loops that you see coming off the edge if they are excessive, move the knife to the right and just move the knife accordingly, try it on some samples and see how it looks. The only way to get really good at determining your cut is to play with that knob and just see where you are so far. as you like in your four-thread or three-thread overlock. Sew well.

I hope you are ready to play a little with your machines. I've taught them enough that they really know how to get started with them. um, let's see what they can do. them with those machines. I have taught you several

tips

in this video on how to do different things with your four thread overlock stitch. I want them to play and play a lot. Really use those machines. They become competent with them. Don't forget, subscribe. Message us on YouTube if you haven't already liked us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram and Twitter for the latest store updates.

Happy Surging and see you soon.