At the start of the year I acquired an overlocker - thanks mum - but had little idea of how to use it. While I have all the manuals, I figured it would be easier to book myself onto a workshop to learn all about it - and to remove some of the Fear.
So I did just that and a couple of weekends ago I headed off to Mansfield for the first time - I didn’t see much of Mansfield apart from the one way system, but I’m sure I’ll be back to have a proper look at more than that at some point. My destination for the workshop was Sally Twinkles (aka Sewing Direct) for a workshop led by Tracey Symonds, who was a semi-finalist in series 4 of the Great British Sewing Bee.
After navigating the one way system more than once I got my bearings, found a car park, parked up and dashed over the road with my machine. Once settled I realised that the other workshop participants had their overlocker already threaded - but that at least meant Tracey had a machine she could demo on and I learnt where the threads should go first hand.
My first learning was that the four cones of thread were split into two for needles and two for the loopers - using four different colours for these meant it was easy to track what was doing what, and while mine are mostly pastels I quite like the idea of using different colours. The spool furthest right seems to determine which colour is on show, as long as you’re set up right.
A large part of the workshop was ‘to overcome the Fear’ - and the fear was real!
Tracey had us all testing our machine’s capabilities on different fabrics, encouraging us all to make a note of the settings for each so that once we knew and noted it down, we at least had a starting point - which makes a lot of sense.
We were overlocking, gathering, doing rolled and lettuce hems and flatlock seams like, well not like we’d only just learnt that’s for sure - and all the time building confidence, and reducing the fear. Tracey was a brilliant teacher - as you’d expect, she’s a retired teacher - though I think I was her problem child for the session! She was unflustered though and her ability to switch between the various makes and machines we had brought with and offer expert advice on each was impressive.
I left the workshop with my examples, which for me were an achievement. However I recognise that the pictures here may seem a little underwhelming, but believe me I wouldn’t have tried half of this had I sat alone with the manuals.
OVERLOCKING ON WOVENS (GREEN), GATHERING (FLOWERY MATERIAL) AND OVERLOCKING ON KNITS (STRIPED)
HEMS: LETTUCE (STRIPED) AND ROLLED (FLOWERY)
FLATLOCK SEAM (CIRCLES) AND OVERLOCKING A CORNER (DENIM)
Of course part of the reason there’s not much to show is that the overlocker trims as it goes, so as I went over and over the lengths of fabric my previous attempts were chopped off. Most were binned but some have the potential for use in collages, but I’ve yet to play further with that.
My other key learnings from the workshop, which I’m including here to remind me, were:
Chain before starting, and chain at the end - it’s much easier to have a length of overlocked stitching at each end of the fabric, and it saves the machine eating the thread - which means it saves rethreading!
The fourth spool is the colour you’ll see the most, so unless you’re very particular you can probably just change this one, however neutrals may work with many fabrics, test it first. Cream and grey are less harsh than white and black, and therefore could be more versatile.
Deal with the ends, or they will come undone eventually. If you’re not overlocking at right angles then either zigzag over them using the sewing machine or thread back through with a large sewing needle.
No pins near an overlocker ever.
For the overlocked corners, move the fabric so it’s in a straight line and though there’ll be some loops which don’t catch, you’ll hardly notice them.
Trying it at home
I knew that if I didn’t try it at home fairly soon afterwards then the workshop would have been a waste of time. So the next day I set it up in my craft room, checked nothing had moved on the journey home and set about trying it for myself. I’m glad I did as even though I’d checked it one of the tension loops had spat out its thread, and my loops were a bit irregular.
But I fixed it - yay! That’s how good the workshop was!
Edging the valance
Then I could set about edging the material for one of my next projects. I’ve signed up for an Indian Block Print & Stitch class and needed to take along some fabric to print on, and they suggested old bedding would be fine. Which is good, as I’ve plenty of that - and when I was sorting out the towels to add to my new bathroom cupboard shelves, I found an old valance sheet which I hadn’t used for years.
Like most valance sheets it was a wotsit to iron, even though it has box pleats rather than frills. So it was repurposed - I cut the frill off, ironed it and set to it with my overlocker.
It was a long old piece of overlocking, but it served two purposes - proving to myself I can do this at home, and readying for some future projects. Don’t you just love it when things come together like that?
So if you’ve got an overlocker in your cupboard that you just don’t love (yet) then I can’t recommend highly enough booking yourself on a workshop and finding out what it can do - I bet you surprise yourself, just like I did!