I've been thinking about getting a serger for a little while now. I have quite a few blankets and the like that I bought material for, but had been dreading all of the folding and trying to sew straight and evenly for all those edges. Plus I'd like to start making some skirts and other clothing type things and I thought I'd be able to put a seger to pretty decent use. I've been scouring craigslist to find a good used machine, but I haven't found anything within a price range I deemed acceptable. And I didn't want to buy a machine with any plastic moving parts, so what seems to be the most popular cheap serger around the interwebs was off of my list.
Well, I went to Va Beach last week to visit my husband. He's been down there for work training this entire summer, and I am so ready for him to come back home! Only a few more days, and he will be home for good, but I digress.. Anyway, I was in Virginia Beach, and I started searching around for fabric stores and found a really awesome store - fabrichut! They have a whole wall of designer quilting cottons for $4.29 a yard. I spent an entire lunch break picking out fabrics for new projects, but then I also noticed that they sold Juki machines. And Juki makes Bernina's sergers. And I LOVE my Bernina sewing machine - its awesome!
The lady who knew about sergers wasn't there over my lunch break on Thursday, so I went back on Saturday to see her. Brad wanted to come along, so the first thing I had him do was locate the appropriate steelers yellow out of the wall of Robert Kauffman Kona solids. I thought his selection was too orange and I was going with a more yellow color on my way to the cutting counter. By luck the lady in line in front of us had a steelers swatch of fabric she had brought from home. He was right about his color selection - I should know better than to argue about anything Steelers!
It turned out that the lady cutting my fabric was also the serger guru. I probably spent 1+ hour with her going over all of the features of the Juki 654. She sewed, I sewed, and then I decided to buy it. She taught me how to thread it (kind of overwhelming!) and then I did it on my own. I didn't do too bad the first time, and I had her make me a copy of the store version of the color "how to thread" sheet. Luckily, there was a sports bar next door and Brad got to sit and have a beer and watch the national track championships while all of this was going on!
So I got back home on Sunday and got it all set up to experiment last night. It was pre threaded for the 4 stitch, but I decided I wanted to serge a thin blanket with a rolled hem. I broke out the book and set it up to do the rolled hem. I cut my fabric a little bigger than I wanted the finished product, because I was sure I was going to lose some fabric in the testing process. I put it through the machine about 5 inches and checked it - a perfect rolled hem!! Amazing and so cool. You can see my results below - this 44" X 44" blanket took about 10 minutes to finish like this! I think I am going to like this machine :)
