Monday, August 13, 2007

little serger trick

I sew both knits and wovens on my serger, and I change needles when I switch from one to the other (universals for wovens, ballpoint for knits). I don't discard my needles all that often; I do when it's obviously needed but sometimes I'll have only sewn a couple t-shirts and then be ready to switch over to wovens. I used to just keep the needles in one of those cases they come in, but I came up with something recently that I think is pretty clever. My serger tools (screwdriver for needles, big tweezers for threading, thingies to hold the thread in place when I'm not using cones) are in a little ziplock on my sewing table, and in that bag I keep a square of folded over knit fabric, and a square of folded over woven fabric. When I take my knit needles out of the machine, I put them in the square of knit fabric and then put that back in the bag. And when I'm set up to sew knits, I store the woven needles in the little woven scrap.

As an added bonus, when I take a break from sewing and can't remember what kind of needles are in the serger, now that I have this little trick I can just look at which scrap has needles in it and then I'll know which needles are in the serger.

2 comments:

Jaki said...

Why didnt I find this tip 3 yrs ago???? I have been suffering from the "what needles do I have in today" syndrome foreverrrrr.... This is such a simple and logical solution, and no more lost needles (Yes I'm a senile aging clutz and am always losing things) Thank you for helping the aged lol

Garilyn S said...

That is a great tip! I've been sewing more knits lately and I just keep putting them back in the original packaging. I am going to do this!