What is Differential?
Aurora Sisneros
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Aurora Sisneros demonstrates the many ways to use a differential when sewing fabrics. Learn how to change the levels of the differential as well as how the differential works with a variety of fabrics. Find out how you can best utilize a differential at home.
The most confusing part for me When I first learnt to use a serger was that thing called the differential. We're gonna run through a couple of different examples of what the differential does so that we can better understand how to use it in our projects. So you can see on my serger here, I've removed the foot so that we can see that there are two feet there's a foot here in the front and there's a foot in the back. My differential is currently at one, which means if I walk this forward with my flywheel you can see the feet are moving at the same pace with each other. Now I'm gonna take my differential and I'm gonna put it to two.
Now you saw that front foot shift. Now what's happening is you can see that that front foot is now pushing faster than the back foot is pulling so you get this kind of effect, the front foot is pushing the fabric into the back foot. Now, if we change it the opposite direction we're gonna go back to one and then down to point seven and we do the same test you'll see that the back foot is now moving faster than the front foot so the back foot is actually pulling the fabric away and if you're using a knit it will actually stretch the fabric out. So let's put the foot back on and do an example. I'm gonna start with my differential at two and we're gonna use a piece of cotton fabric and we're gonna to send it through.
Now remember when your differential is at two the front foot is pushing the fabric under the foot. Now if you'll notice it's bunching right in here. Once you run it all the way through, you'll notice that you have a little gathered stitch just like that. So now let's try it on the opposite end of the differential, we're going to put the differential at seven and we're going to use a knit fabric and we're going to run it through Because the back foot was moving faster and pulling the fabric away it stretched the fabric out so that does not lay flat. Now, in some cases like on a little girl's cute dress you could do that and it'll make a little ruffle edge but in this case, if we were sewing and testing our piece before we did a project, we would know that our differential is pulling too fast and we would need to raise it a little bit to get this to be a nice straight edge and that is your differential demystified.
I WISH YOU WOULD HAVE RESEWED BOTH MATERIALS AND STATE WHAT DIFFERENTIAL SETTING DID A SMOOTH JOB. THANKS
That was great! I'm new to serging and was baffled until this video came along. Thanks.
This was something new to me. Thanks for the tips!
Would have been helpful to show each fabric using the "correct" setting. :)
What is differeential? Where I canfind?
Very clear and helpful.
Very interesting and informative, thanks Aurora
why is she calling the feed dog a foot? She should be using the correct terminology. Also, she says she is setting the differential feed to 7 instead of .7
Didn't know my serger even had a differential. Thank you so much! I think I'll go play with this option and learn to use it to my advantage.