Serging in the Wilderness

Since I live in Homer, a little southcentral Alaskan coastal town, there are no Viking dealers within 200 miles, unless you mean Viking Husqvarna chainsaw dealers. And even if there was, I bought my machine on EBAY which does NOT offer classes with purchases of sewing machines. So I asked around my neighbors. One neighbor warned me to "never change the thread." Wow, that's quite a warning! I corresponded with my ebay seller a few times, and he offered the helpful advice that I could change thread by "tying on" new thread to the old.

Frustrated, I went on facebook and told everyone I bought a serger and I couldn't figure it out. I was surprised that many of my facebook friends also have sergers. All of them confessed to having problems with them. One said that he bought a serger for his wife, and she never took it out of the box. A non-serger owning friend recommended going to youtube for instructional videos. To my surprise, there are LOTS of these, even on serger operations. So I looked at a few of those. They were very helpful, and I began to understand the basics of the loopers vs. the needle threads and how each appears on the fabric. But when I tried to serge, my needle thread broke every time. I pored over the threading instructions in my Huskylock user's guide with reading glasses. With a magnifying glass I tried to relate the tiny parts on my machine to the parts pictured in the user's guide. I decided the guide is essentially useless because more often than not, I cannot establish these relationships!

Then I learned that my closest neighbor has a serger. In desperation I begged her to come by for an instructional visit. She's a great gal and I learned she does lots of beautiful sewing. Calmy she walked me through the threading charts in my Huskylock guide. And she figured out the problem; Although each looper and needle thread was threaded correctly, they were not threaded in the right order! Who knew you have thread each one in order? Thank you Peggy Huff!