Knits 101 Session 7: Serging Knit Fabric

Okay. Do you have a serger lurking in your closet, or have you always wanted to get a serger? I'm gonna give you a very brief introduction to sergers so that you can get to sewing your knits on one, if you happen to have one. Which, I happen to have one right here, so it's very handy. So again, with the serger you have a couple options when it comes to what sort of stitches you use. sergers are always considered a necessity when sewing knits, because their stitches are designed to stretch with the knits. You can see this is extra stretchy. It's gonna go anywhere the other knits go. Now the overlock stitches on your machine, your sewing machine should do the same thing. But if you have a serger, they're really great for seam finishes. I have just done four stitches on here that I thought applied to the knits I'd be working with today, but sergers have a variety of options. This one has several extra stitches, and you'd always want to refer to your user manual to find out exactly what all it can do. You can see here. If we remove the warranty, there's a handy reference chart. That's gonna show you your needle position, what page to look up, there's, and it shows you kind of what the stitch would look like if you were using it. So definitely bear in mind that you always need your user manual when you're using your serger. Not only to learn how to thread it, which is very important but to learn which tension settings to put in place whenever you're serging anything. So here you can see that it's telling me that the blue threads should be 3.5 and the green threads should be, well that one doesn't use a green thread or, but so forth. So always refer to your manual because it's gonna be your very best friend when working with a serger. And for our project today, on the skirt and really just in general, what I prefer to use on a serger are the four thread safety stitch or overlock stitch, and the three thread overlock. The fourth thread just gives you an extra line of stitches that are helpful. Some of them, if you see here, it doesn't have one straight line that goes along the edge but some of them will do that where there's just one straight stitch of lines next to that overlock. And that might actually end up being five threads, just depends. There's sergers are, there's all different types of sergers in the world. And then the three thread is the same but it's just like, slightly less dense. So if you're using lighter weight knits go ahead and use a three thread, or even possibly go down to a two thread overlock. If you're doing denser fabrics, or things that really need to make sure that they're going to be under a lot of stress such as athletic wear, swimwear, go ahead and use a four thread overlock. And let's look at our serger for a moment. So here we have our serger. You can see, I have beautiful different colors of thread on here, and that's just so I can show you that the blue one is gonna go to the left needle. The green one goes to the right needle. The red one is the upper looper and the yellow is the lower looper. And when you're threading the machine, can see here that there's a little handy chart inside. And there's all these different pieces in here that you have to thread. And as you thread it, you have to move them around to get to them. You always want to use your tweezers that come with the machine while you are, you know, threading it because they pull that thread through tight little spaces as you go. Now, you can see with all these different things inside, there's a lot going on in there. So always refer to your chart and your user manual when serging, or when threading your machine. And these are your tension discs up here. When you are serging things, they're gonna give you a recommendation for a tension that you should use and put it in, that's for kind of a medium weight knit. You might have to increase or decrease it depending on what kind of knit you're using. If it's extra dense, or if it's very lightweight you know, tissue paper knits. Oh, and another thing that's important to remember about your serger. There is a blade which is right here and there is also a blade release option, where you can remove that blade. The blade cuts off the edge of the fabric as you go, which is why a lot of people like sergers is that they make that really clean finish as you're stitching. All sergers, or at least most of the sergers I've come across these days have differential feed, which means that as you put the fabric through, you can stretch the fabric and adjust the differential feed to make sort of this lettuce edge, which, that one's a real loosey goosey lettuce edge. But here on these delightful pajama pants with flamingos, you can see this is a more specific lettuce edge, that is just that wrapped over thread that stretches it out and makes it loopy. And then they went another step further which is a gathered overedge, which you can see, they also gathered this fabric. So they both did the lettuce edge and then gathered it up. So they did two different techniques to make a nice edge finish there. And of course, if you like that look, if you want a little ruffle on the bottom, go for it. The gathered overedge is how you make a ruffle. The machine just does it for you as you stitch. And it makes it nice and fancy that way. So let me show you just the basic stitch, how to use it. If you have one of these at home, I'm sure if you've experimented with it. I know I had one forever in my closet that I inherited and I just didn't use it for years. And finally I said, you know, let's see what that's about. So I'm gonna pick up my presser foot, put my fabric underneath. You don't always have to even do that because it will, there are feed dogs on the presser foot and below. We'll just serge right over. So right now I'm doing a four thread overlock. When you're done serging something, you wanna do this where you make a thread tail and just snip that off. Now I've snipped very close to the edge of my fabric when I snipped that off. And what you actually wanna do is leave that tail and use a little fray check on the edges to keep it from unraveling. That's the way to keep your serge stitches in place for years and years, other people like to take a very thin crochet hook or needle. There's also special devices that do this, and they go underneath their stitches and they just pull that thread tail in to capture it underneath after they've finished sewing. Either is fine, whatever you're most comfortable with, but you can see if you look very, very closely that the red thread, which is the upper looper is looping over the edge there. The green and blue threads are doing straight stitches along, catching the red upper thread. And on the other side you'll see the yellow thread which is the lower looper, is looping over the edge there. And that's why the different colors are in the machine. These other colors of thread are very helpful if you ever have a problem with your serger and you're not sure which stitch is not catching. Put in four different colors of thread, run it through your machine and you'll be able to see, oh, okay. So the yellow thread isn't catching. So there's, the lower looper maybe isn't threaded correctly. So that's the basics of using a serger. I tend to use my sewing machine, because at my house getting out the serger might be a whole other step. And I just want to go, go, go when I'm sewing. But if you have one and you love it, put it to good use. I love the serger. I think it's fantastic for edge finishes, and you can finish knits and wovens with it. So yeah, so go ahead and get your serger out and you're ready to go. Now that we know how to sew knits, and cut knits and prep knits, I think we're ready to go ahead and make a project. So in the next session we're gonna learn how to make that skirt over there that has been lurking this whole time. So stay tuned.