A new addition!!

There is a new addition to the family... a SERGER!! Woot! I scored this little beauty on Craigslist for $75!

It's a New Home (Janome) MyLock 434. Not sure what any of that means, but I know that Janome makes good stuff, so yay! I cleaned it up and then opened the instruction manual to tackle threading the beast...

OY VEY!!

The person who invented this contraption was a genius! Holy hell, the complexity of threading this thing is mind-boggling! FOUR threads that all go through different holes, hooks, loops, and crevices!

Oh, and there's two needles! I didn't even know that until I got it! LOL!

FOUR spools of thread! Neato reato! There she be.. all threaded and ready to roll (or purr, as it is).

I started playing with it and after a while figured out that it was set on R, which is for a rolled hem. Took some fiddling to figure out how to get it over to S, which is serge. So, serging is when you basically seal the edges of fabric w/ thread (lots of thread) and it cuts off excess fabric, thus giving you a straight line that is all tidy w/ raw edges encased w/in the threads. Clear as mud? Here you can see the little tail coming off on the right side, that is the part it cut off (with the super sharp knife!).

This puppy really hums. I like the sound of it and I like what it can do. My one problem is that I'm not sure how to finish the end. Like, you can't backstitch on a serger so I'm not sure how to get the ends to not unravel. I read that you can tie knots, or use liquid stitch (but it hardens and that's not comfortable), or you can do some other thing where you flip the tail back and sew over it, or something. Obviously, whatever that last thing was, wasn't clear to me!

Exciting stuff, I tell ya!