Another Tee ? Not yet :-(

Edit - 8:50pm - it's rethreaded and playing nicely 'at the moment'

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But it’s soooooo close !

After more than one pitched battle with the serger (of which I only won some of them) - It looks like a t-shirt & it fits but it has no hem.

You need to know I have absolutely NO comfort zone with my serger. DH bought it for me in the late 90’s (1997-1998 ?) and I was terrified of it. It languished in its box for close to 5 years or so before I psyched myself up enough to try to use it. I was looking for a simple 2/3 maybe 4 thread serger. The year we bought it, this one was Singer’s top of the line 5-thread serger with cover stitch. Yup, simple :-)

Yesterday morning, I went down to the sewing room to finish the tee. In about 1½ hours, I

• serged the neckline, turned it under and sewed it down.
• serged the opposite shoulder with a piece of ¼" clear elastic
• serged the sleeves in flat
• serged the sleeve hems, turned them up and sewed them
• serged the sleeves and sides in one pass. So far, so good, no problems !

Only one more pass with the serger to clean finish the hem and the hemming itself. I should have had a new tee ready for pictures before 9:30 am - ‘should have had’ - have I ever mentioned ‘Murphy’ and I are very good friends ?

Halfway along the serged hem, the upper looper thread ran out. Had to re-thread the whole darn thing, of course. (this takes me forever each time - with the instruction manual right in front of me, step by step)

While rethreading, I remembered Gaylen mentioning that you can use regular thread when you want to match the color. So, I decided to attempt my very first coverstitched hem. Pulled all the threading out of the machine and moved on to switching from overlock to coverstitch. This took about 43 hours - I’m sure it will get quicker in time ! LOL

At the end of the this long and painful process what did I see ? A perfectly threaded serger all ready for a coverstitch hem….ALL IN WHITE THREAD ! I forgot to change to my red thread for the needles AARRRGGGHHHHH.

Got the red thread, rethreaded the needles and …………………….nope it didn’t work ! Right needle thread kept breaking. I did get one presentable sample of about 3 inches. It will look great once I figure it out.

At 11:30pm I gave up, pulled all the threads out of the serger and went to bed.

This is what it looked like...not even the needles are in, see them sitting on the table?

By the way, I have a new best friend - an LED light so I can actually see what I'm doing inside the serger. It really works !