What Can a Baby Lock Serger Do?

Hi, I'm Linda Puccini and as Baby

lock

's Training Director, I get asked all the time why I would want a

serger

. Well, the answer I give in most cases is because it is the most efficient piece of equipment you could ever put together. in your sewing room let me show you

what

I'm talking about, if you're a garment sewer, you probably already know that sometimes you buy fabric that looks like this, it's all frayed on the sides, but when you put it through a

serger

it comes back totally clean your fabric, no more frayed edges and looks super professional.

I love this technique and you can use it on any fabric now. The other thing about sergers too is that they're not just for lightweight fabrics, in fact you can use some nice ones. Pretty thick denim if need be, this is

what

it looks like and I can even go through four layers. Your serger should be able to finish edges like this and sport a perfect balance of tensions all the time, with no adjustments on my part and that's one. Of the benefits of a Baby Lock serger, they don't need any adjustment because all the magic is built inside, let me show you some other features that I really love.

I like sewing knit fabrics and one of the main reasons I bought a serger. It's just that I wanted to be able to make some clothes on my own and I got tired of my stitches jumping right when you're making knits, that's not going to happen. I'm going to line up my rib knit together with my knit fabric to create the perfect finish for a neckline, so you probably recognize it, it looks like the top of a t-shirt that you could buy at the store or make yourself, but the great The advantage, of course, is that when you sew with a serger these seams are stretched.

This means you will never hear those clicking sounds that normally occur when you sew something on a sewing machine with knit fabrics, you can stretch it and you won't get any pop stitches, that's a real plus so I hope you're starting to see. a little bit of what a serger can do, let me show you something really fun that most people don't think about when they think of a serger and that is gathering fabric with small adjustments on my machine, changing the stitch length and activating my differential feeding means. that I'm going to get beautiful gathers, look how pretty it is and the bonuses if you take your Freds here on this edge and stretch them out, the two shorter threats are going to be my needle threads and to get additional gathers, all I have to do .

What I do is I pull that thread and I can gather my fabric even more so now you can get an even better ratio than two to one when you make your garments so for someone who likes to decorate the home this is the option perfect. Finish to put ruffles on the edge of a pillow or maybe even finish your quilt that way and for the sores on your clothes, you know you can make yards and yards of ruffles without having to break a sweat at all and that was quick, did you? No? Now I'm going to leave my differential opinion and did you know that you can apply elastic to fabrics like lycra and do it all at once?

It's simple and easy to do with a serger. My fabric is perfectly finished and ready to topstitch so I can finish off the waist or maybe even the top of a skirt or swimsuit and now I'm going to make a couple of small adjustments and show you how easy it is to get my machine into action. a 3 thread search. which is where I can start doing some more creative stitching. I'm just going to remove one of my needles. I'm going to cut the thread at the top and now when I take it out it takes the needle and I'm ready for another technique, we're going to go back to using some lycra again and I'm going to make a really very stretchy stitch using just 3 narrow threads , so this is a beautiful finish, especially if you want to make swimsuits or something where you don't want the threads to take up a lot of volume, which means you don't want the finished seam to be so wide.

I really like this stitch when making sheer fabrics and you may be able to see a bit of my seam allowance through the garment perfect stitch to turn to and now let me show you probably the only stitch you could never even replicate on a machine normal sewing and that is the narrow rolled hem and on a

baby

over

lock

er it is the easiest. thing to set up, so follow me because it will go fast. I'm going to grab my stitch selector. I'm going to click on it a little notch. I'm going to change my stitch length because I have what's called an automatic narrow stitch.

Rolled hem and a little more adjustment. I'm changing the width of the stitch sheet and now I'm going to take the piece of fabric that I put together earlier and we're going to go through it and finish it. This beautiful finish is exactly what many ready-to-wear garments have as their final hem on formal dresses and you may even recognize that it is something that is often done on the edges of table crosses or napkins. There are many uses for a narrow hem, even if you are making your own wedding veils. I love this stitch because it encloses the edge of my fabric and it looks absolutely beautiful and now with another little adjustment here I can make one of my other finishing stitches.

This is a stitch that is even finer than a. I've made it before and the other part that's fabulous is how it looks when you buy a silk scarf when it's finished, you'll see what I mean in a second. I'm going to lengthen my stitch length a little more. my second pass looks like the edge of a silk scarf to me, so there you have it, these are probably the most used stitches when someone talks about an overlock machine, but if you've been paying close attention to what I've been doing to you. You've probably noticed that the only threads I've used so far are my light green threads and you're probably wondering why I would have four extra threads in my machine.

Well, this is our top-of-the-line triumph. which means it has all the capacity that any

baby

type overlocker would have and I know that means we have cover and chain stitch capability too on that machine and if you don't know what that means, stick around because I'm going to show you that in just a second I'm set up and ready to show you what a cover stitch looks like so I'm sure you're curious and this is a stitch you probably see all the time in knitwear. you just didn't know how it was done at the factory level so here we go with the perfect stitch for finishing hems and now let me show you something you probably didn't know you could do because with the cover hem you can gather the hem.

I'm just turning on my differential feed, so gathering fabric like this using a cover and chain stitch means there are lots of creative uses. If you take the threads and sew on both edges of the fabric, you can create a gathered stitch. both sides and that is typically used in traditional sewing if you are creating a puffed strip. Now we had a shirt knit before and like I said before, having your machine be able to do a cover hem is a great way to be able to finish off a shirt knit What I love about this machine is that at the toe there's a lot of different little notches that line up with my needles and I'm going to feel underneath my fabric which is a beautiful finish and I know you can do this on the sewing machine but the difference is you don't get any channeling that would happen with the twin needle Also when you stretch it your stitches don't jump and now for my fabric what I said before once I put the elastic on you could cast off and this is the stitch we're going to use and again I'm just going to fold my fabric over my elastic and this time I'm going to sew from the right side of my fabric so I can see where my needles are landing so it's a quick finish for any type of swimsuit or any type of garment that you're making with lycra and now I can take my machine and remove one of the needles.

I set it up as a wide deck. stitch you can also do a narrow stitch, but what I want to do now is reduce it to a single needle, so now with a single needle and my chain linker I have what would be a serger equivalent to a straight stitch, this is what This stitch looks like this, it is a very functional stitch and is especially pretty when you use a decorative thread in your chain linker. There is a lot to know about sergers and they can improve any type of sewing you are doing. Look at your Baby Lock. retailer, consult one of their search professionals and see what a serger can do for your sewing.