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in which I turn my sewing machine into a serger…
2009 @ 9:21 am
A month or two ago I went crazy and bought about five new feet for my sewing machine. A little gift for treating me so nice lately. Today I tried out the Singer Sidecutter–the sew and serge foot. WHOA. This thing is cool. I have a Singer machine, FYI.
I decided today was the day to figure out how to use it–and to blog about it since it’s fresh in my mind. But what really brought it on? The fact that I want to make myself a dress and I don’t want to have tickle-y raw seams. For some reason I find this completely acceptable to put on my children, but I would rather have a finished edge, without the fussiness of french seams. Plus it’s officially summer–the less pressing the better! It’s all cut and ready to go (hi Jess!)
I’m going to translate the bizarro instructions into plain English, okay? I didn’t find much useful info on this foot and they don’t get the best reviews. I think, however, this may be due to lack of practice with the foot. I found some important things out pretty quickly.
Okay, putting the thing on. You take out the shank screw and remove the regular foot. When you install the side cutter, be sure that the fork shaped thing hooks over the needle screw before setting the foot onto the shank. This is is what makes mechanism for the knife move. Now set your machine to zig zag with a pretty narrow stitch setting.
Next, make a 2cm cut into your fabric about 1 cm from the edge. Set the fabric into the cutter, laying both sides of the fabric OVER the plastic bar. The knife should fall between the two pieces of fabric.
The edge to trim should be on the right. Set the fabric to be sewn so that it is under the foot and rests just before the needle. That way, the needle will grab the fabric as soon as you start. Okay you are ready. HOLD ON TO YOUR THREAD ENDS. And away we go. Slowly, at first.
(view from back of machine).
Pretty neat, right? You can see that this was my first attempt and my stitch was a bit loose. This will be EXCELLENT for preparing hems and using the blind hem stitch (and foot!). I am tired of pressing and finishing seams.
The next thing I tried was “serging” two pieces together. This is where I think some of the negative reviews come from, but stick with me, there is a solution, provided you have some fancier stitches on your machine.
Here is the result of using the zig zag stitch to finish a seam:
Booooooo. The stitching shows right through to the front! It needs a stabilizing straight stitch. Luckily, my machine has something called the Turkish Stitch. It’s basically a zig zig that has a straight stitch along either side.
There are a couple of other overcast stitches to choose from on my machine, but this is the only one that didn’t cause the needle to hit the plate. Be sure to test out any stitches by holding onto your thread and turning the hand wheel toward you.
The result is a beautiful, finished seam!
I do plan to practice more with this foot before I dive in to sewing the dress. I also may mark my stitch lines with soluble pen to be sure I’m getting the correct seam allowance. There are marks on the foot, but the cut side of the fabric tends to shift. I think this will be difficult to use as a seam guide without practice.
I hope this makes things easier for someone, someday!
*Want to see more detail…all photos are available in a larger format on Flickr.
Comments
Whoa. All I can say is whoa. That is pretty frakkin cool…
Holy crap, that’s like the coolest thing I’ve seen all week – I think I need to looksee if I can do the same for my cheapo brother (gotta be a lot less expensive and space consuming than a whole new serger right?)
I had NO IDEA that’s what the Turkish stitch was for. Thank you! Now I can actually use that disc that came with my machine.
Thank you for commenting on my site, when you make your dress make sure the bodice is really tightly sewn in, so it doesn’t gape. I’ve decided to take in the sides of my dress, as I think it’s a bit too baggy around my top half, making me look wider than I do! I’m going to use a wrap dress I own to help me out!
hmmm, interesting! i didn’t know that these sorts of stitches were available on a home machine. very cool!