Serger Decorative Stitches Session 3: Decorative Finishes

The decorative stitches that I'm going to show you now, the decorative finishes rather. Use three thread and two thread stitches, both flat lock and rolled edges. I've already got my machine set up for a three thread rolled edge, which was the one that we finished the last segment with. And I'm gonna show you how that same stitch can be used to do pin tucks. We see pin tucks primarily in any kind of heirloom sewing and also on blouses. They're lovely decorative touch and they are so easy to do. So I've got a little piece of fabric here. The secret here is that you want to leave at least an inch three quarters to an inch, between your pin tucks. And I'm gonna go ahead and do an inch and a half. Why? No particular reason. I just wanna make sure we've got plenty of distance there. The main reason that we're doing that is to make sure that you have room between the pin tuck for the foot to fit in and not cause problems. And I will show you what can happen in a minute here if you don't. I'm just using this as a Chalk Deco-Marker. It's one that I like a lot. You can, if you don't want marks. One tip that I have is when you get ready to fold this instead of making your lines just very carefully measure back, make your fold and press it, put a good crease in there. Another marker that's very very good. Are the air soluble ones. It's a pen that you can buy at any sewing store. And over time the air will dissolve any marks that are on your fabric. This is just chalk. It comes in different colors. And it should be well hidden by the stitches. But if you're worried about the chalk getting into your thread, may not be the one you wanna use but for today's demo, it's just fine. What I'm using is, I wanna show you this is a very very lightweight fabric. This is what we call a batiste. It's extremely thin. You can probably see my hand through it. Very lightweight. It's very popular for like heirloom baby christening gowns, or summer blouses, things of that nature. It's very nice fabric to work with. When I said that I don't want you making your marks too close together. What happens when you stitch if they're too close, and you can see these were close. They started out nice and even, but then because of the way the foot is and getting caught on some of the stitching it went off and now it's wider. And so I don't have nice precise pin tucks and I didn't particularly like that. We're gonna see what happens going a little bit wider. Move this out of the way. So this one as I said is a three thread rolled edge. This is my inspiration book. What I like about the book. And you will, like I said, most manufacturers have something similar. It shows you different techniques and exactly how to create the stitches. So in this case, this is for the pin tucks and it tells me exactly how to set it up for the three thread rolled edge and then shows me what it can look like with different types of thread. So with that in mind, let's get ready to stitch this. Now when you're stitching this, you want to make sure the biggest thing to double-check on a pin tuck is that your knife is in the locked position. You do not want to be trimming the fabric at all. And then you want to fold your fabric so it's right on that line that you marked. And I like to put that line right next to the knife. So it is lined up right even with the knife. And we're going to, I did a little bit longer stitch length than what I did with the last segment when I was showing you the three thread rolled edge. I've lengthened it out just a touch. Now as I'm sewing I want to make sure that that folded edge stays right next to my knife. That's why I'm going a little bit slower. And if you notice, at the end of that row I do finger press back because there is some puckering there and that will steam out. Then you want to go to your next folded line. Fold it. And you want to make sure that you are stitching in the same direction. And pin tucks can typically be as far apart or as close together as you want within the limitation of the foot so that it stays straight. When I do these over here because they will be, these will be pressed in that direction and these will be pressed in the opposite direction. I'm going to reverse the direction because they're on the opposite side of each other. Whenever you're surging I highly recommend making a test sample. In this case if this was my test sample, I would probably say these are a little wider apart than I would like to see. And I might've gone with perhaps an inch, maybe even an inch and a quarter, an inch and an eighth, instead of having it that far apart. But depending on what I'm doing, and if I have many more pin tucks that may be just fine, it's all personal preference. And again once you're done you're going to want to give these a press and that will take care of the puckering there. And these will be absolutely lovely. I will say that I noticed that the chalk is showing through. So if I was working with something this thin I would try and minimize my marking as much as possible. And that's why I like the idea of just pressing and going without any mark. But, it's all personal preference. If I was using a darker thread you would never have seen that chalk. So that's all there is to it for doing a pin tuck. You can certainly do this as a two thread rolled edge for an even finer look. It eliminates one thread, and with a fabric thin that might actually be a better choice. Another option instead of using the thick rayon embroidery thread, which is about a 40 weight, I would recommend especially if I was doing an heirloom item, I would consider 100 weight silk thread would make a very delicate, very beautiful pin tuck. Would still have that little bit of sheen to it, but it wouldn't be standing up quite as stiff. It would be I think, a little bit better look. That's where you wanna play with your threads. Make a test sample. It's easy to do a small sample and say, I'm not real happy with it then to go right to work on your garment and go, oh my gosh, I wish I would have done it differently. So do a test sample. And I think you're gonna find lots of uses for pin tucks. And they certainly are easy. Now I wanna show you the decorative flat lock stitch. The purpose of the decorative flat lock is to reduce bulk while giving a decorative look. And it's primarily used with interlocking knits. And also with fleece, very very popular with fleece. So that's what we're gonna demonstrate with today. I am going to be using the three thread narrow flat lock stitch, and that means I'll be using the right needle. And in the right needle I have a regular sewing thread is my choice. Although you can use serger thread or rayon embroidery thread, or any thread 40 to 100 weight. And then in my loopers for both loopers I'm using wooly nylon. For the decorative flat lock stitch the wooly nylon is an excellent choice, as is Pearl crown rayon. It will show up the most with the heavier thread. And another excellent choice would be your 12 weight a thread. So I have this in both of my loopers. I have for my knife. It is in the locked position. You do not want to be trimming off your fabric at all. And the thing you want to keep in mind, you can't tell it on this fabric because with my fleece, it's the same front to back. There really is no right or wrong side. But typically you want to put your wrong sides together and have your right sides to the outside. We're going to be stitching just to the right of the needle. So that means when I put this under the a presser foot, I don't necessarily want to be might not be able to see this. I usually work right next to my knife, this time I want to be just off of the knife. And this is a tricky little stitch, especially when you're using the narrow flat lock because you're just barely catching the edge of each fabric. So you're going to want so slowly. And what you will notice is that your loops are actually falling off of the fabric and are loose, but that's exactly what we want. Let's give this a try and see what we get. So that's part one of this stitch. I'm going to put this on some whites so that maybe you can see here what I want is for my loops to be off of that edge. I think you can maybe see that when I pull it, the idea is that you want it to be loose, not a tight stitch. So that was step one. Step two is we're going to come over here and very very gently, The goal is to pull that stitch apart so that it looks like a ladder. And you don't wanna pull too hard because I guarantee you with it being the narrow three thread, it will rip apart. And I don't want that. I just want to come down here and oops, and make it so that you see a little bit of a ladder. And ideally what's happening is the two edges should be just budded together with the thread going between the two. So that what happens is as the name implies it is a flat lock. The two pieces are locked together and they are flat. And you can see this fairly well over here, where that is becoming the case. And it just takes a little time. You wanna take your time and work it. Now you aren't seeing a lot of it here because it is narrow, but that is what happens. This was your right side out here. Remember the right sides where the outsides, the wrong sides were together. So if this was your garment, this is what you're seeing. If you like the opposite side that is called a ladder stitch. And so in that case, turn your fabric the opposite way so that the right sides are together. And then this would be the look on the outside of your garment. Now I wanna show you the three thread wide flat lock and you can see the difference. And here it's a little more pronounced. So if this was the right side this was done with Pearl crown rayon. That's what you'd be seeing for your decorative stitch on the outside of your garment which can be very very attractive. And this one again, I did with the two different colors of Pearl crown rayon which gives it a little extra depth or you could use the same color if you want the latter stitch do it the opposite way. And this is what you'd see. If you bring your stitches further apart if you increase your stitch length, another decorative touch is to thread very narrow ribbon such as what you would use for ribbon embroidery in a large eye needle and slip it underneath there. And you can even weave it over, under, over, under. And it gives a very fun, very pretty look to your stitching. So I hope you'll have fun with it. You can also do this as a two thread wide flat lock, if you want to eliminate even more bulk. For our final decorative stitch today I wanna show you the blanket stitch. And it is a very nice decorative look. I'm a going to be using a three thread wide flat lock. So this time I basically left it set up the same as from the flat lock stitch that we did a minute ago I'm using the wooly nylon and both loopers. And I am using the, actually I've got that in the wrong one. I've got the needle thread to the left and something I wanted to remind you of when you take your needle out and change it from left to right, whatever needle you aren't using. I want you to make sure that you gently tighten that other screw down not just for the needle that you're using, but for the unoccupied needle as well. It doesn't need to be super tight, just finger tight. But I have seen it happen where due to the vibration and the serging, that that little screw can come out and get lost and get down into your machine. And you certainly don't want that to happen. So I wanna pass that on as a little tip. So today we're doing the three thread flat lock for blanket stitch, and I've got my little guide here that I've used to set it up. And once again our knife is locked. That's another thing that is always something worth double checking. In this case, we're going to be using fleece. It's primarily a good one to use with knits or with fleece, I particularly like it on fleece. It gives a pretty little look. Again I'm using the wooly nylon but you could use Pearl crown rayon, or the 12 weight thread in your loopers. It gives a very very nice look. But you definitely want to go with a thinner thread in the needles, either the serger thread or the rayon embroidery, or any weight 40 to 100. The other thing that you're going to need is a piece of water soluble stabilizer. And what that means is that when you're done with your sewing, you will be spritzing this stabilizer with water and it dissolves, but this actually helps make the stitch. We are going to put it to the right edge so that when you sew you will be sewing both the stabilizer and your fleece together. I like to double it up because we're going to be pulling on this to pull that flat lock into a blanket stitch. And sometimes one layer just isn't enough or you may want to get a heavy weight water soluble stabilizer. But I'm just doubling this up today. And this is why I don't want to engage my knife is because I will be serging through both layers. And as we did in the decorative flat lock I also want to have my stitches falling off the edge. So I'm not going to be right next to the knife. I'm going to be back from it a little bit. Again, we're going to sew a little bit more slowly just so that we can watch and make sure that the stitches are falling off. And here we go. And once again, I forgot to put down my presser foot. And I'm using a little bit longer stitch I'm using a stitch length of four on this. And I also am doing it as a wide stitch because I like to see a lot of the blankets stitch. And I don't know if you're able to see this on the video but I do have, if you can see in there and I'll show you on the table when we're finished, the loops are falling off the edge. So I'm using this as a background, just so you can see. And I think as you look here you can see that those loops are very very loose and they are indeed off the edge of the fabric and that will make it a little bit easier. So the goal here is to gently pull on your stabilizer. And we're trying to convince those threads to roll to the back. And I will tell you right up front it does take a little bit of work, a little bit of persuasion. But if you're patient, it will work. What I want to avoid is ripping the stabilizer because it will distort the threads. I find if I kind of push up with my bottom finger I can kind of work it a little bit better. Just kind of use my finger as a persuasive tool. And then you can come over to the backside and kind of work those stitches just a little bit. And ideally when you're done, this will be fairly flat or with just a slight roll to the fleece. So I'm gonna stop right there. I think you get the idea. And then what I like to do is just come along and when you're happy with it, trim off close to the edge. And I think you can see here that we've got a nice blanket stitch. You will have a line of the stitching from the looper will be riding right on the top edge there is the goal. And then you have the individual blanket stitches there. And once you have it the way you want it, like I said it probably needs a touch more futsing right now but it's pretty close. Come back with your bottle of spray, a spray bottle rather filled with water. It can be lukewarm. I find works best or even room temperature. Just spritz it and let it sit for a little bit. If it doesn't all come off the way you'd like another thing you can do is just put it in a sink full of water, but then yeah, everything gets wet, but just let it dry. Stick it in the dryer. And there you have your blanket stitch.