The Needle Makes the Difference

Apologies to my readers who aren’t fascinated by my serging experiments. This phase won’t last forever. It’s important to me to document some of this stuff, though, for my own future reference and in case it helps someone else avoid having to reinvent the wheel.

When I am looking for ideas for class projects, I see if there are similar tutorials on the internet. Seeing how other people communicate a technique helps me refine how I want to teach it. And I like to have resources for students to refer to after the class is over.

I went looking for a lettuce-edge scarf tutorial, because I thought that would be a good project to get students comfortable with that technique. Sure, we could make samples with plain old pieces of fabric, but sometimes, real-world projects come with problems that don’t show up in the samples. My index of suspicion went way up when I discovered that there were virtually no tutorials for lettuce edge scarf projects, and the one tutorial that seemed to be linked the most often had been taken off the sponsor’s website. Hmmmm. That indicates to me that there were possible issues that resulted in lots of questions or complaints.

{Or perhaps not. I’m speculating here, because content gets removed for lots of reasons. If the technique is easy, though, a Google search should bring up a couple dozen online tutorials for one project or another.]

Zede and Mallory Donohue, the mother-daughter duo behind the Sewing Out Loud podcast, made a YouTube video in 2012 where they discuss lettuce edge scarves. (The pertinent content is in the second half of the video.) They talk about an issue with these kinds of scarves, which is that the edge finish doesn’t always stay attached to the fabric. Instead, it lifts away and dangles out in mid-air, like this:

Zede and Mallory note that it’s important to make sure the fabric doesn’t pull away from the needle as it goes through the machine, but that was their only suggestion for avoiding this problem.

I made my first couple of samples of lettuce edging with a polyester/spandex blend knit. I had no issues. The lettuce edging was nice and substantial and didn’t pull away from the fabric. When I switched to this teal rayon/spandex blend, though, I started having all sorts of problems like the one you see in the photo above. It happened on the crosswise grain of the fabric and it happened even more on the bias. And even when the rolled edge stayed attached to the fabric, it lacked integrity. I don’t want to include a project like this in a class—it will do nothing but frustrate students.

I fiddled with the differential feed. I fiddled with the presser foot pressure. I serged with the knit side up. I serged with the purl side up. I even tried some wash-away stabilizer. Nothing helped. The stitches did not want to catch on the fabric. I changed to a different color of the same rayon/spandex blend. Same result.

I sat there and thought for a while. And then I heard a voice in my head.

Change the needle.

Not “change the needle” as in “the needle is worn out and you need a new one.” This was “change the needle” to a different type of needle. I was using an 80/12 jersey (ball point) needle. Theoretically, that should have worked.

We have a much wider variety of fabrics available these days, including a whole class of fabrics known as “performance fabrics.” These are the specialty fabrics for workout clothing, swimwear, and outdoor activities. With that has come an expanded selection of sewing needles. It used to be that you would go to the fabric store and have your choice of regular, ball point, denim, quilting, embroidery, and leather needles. Now there are Microtex, jersey, stretch, fleece, denim, leather, vinyl, embroidery, topstitching, metallic, quilting, and even cosplay needles. Some of those also come in chrome-plated or titanium-plated versions for high-speed sewing.

I use Schmetz needles almost exclusively. They are easy to find and work well. Schmetz has both a “jersey” needle and a “stretch” needle. What is the difference? From Schmetz’s website:

Jersey & Stretch needles have medium ball points. The eye & scarf differ. Use the Stretch needle when fabrics contain Lycra®, Spandex® or elastic. Use Jersey on knits & some stretch fabrics. Jersey & Stretch needles are sometimes interchangeable. Test needle, thread, and fabric combo for stitch quality.

The scarf is a scooped-out area on the back side of the needle, above the eye. Sailrite has an excellent photo on their website.) It helps the hook underneath the needle plate to loop the thread and make the stitch.

I found a 75/11 stretch needle in my stash and put it in the serger. And then I tried again—and this time, I got a beautiful lettuce edge with no unattached loops anywhere:

Changing the needle made the serging effortless. The stitches are firmly seated in the fabric and the wooly nylon spreads out evenly. Part of me is still baffled by such a simple fix, but I’m happy with the result. And I am confident now that this will make a good class project. I’ll include specifics in the supply list so students can get what they need ahead of time.