Originally Posted by
tropit
I know that there are people out there that LOVE their sergers, but I'm certainly not one of them. About 8, or 9 years ago, I bought 2 different styles of machines for our swimwear business, a JUKI and a JANOME. We used them to make first samples and then sent the samples to the pros for refinement. It would take hours to thread them and get them running and then they constantly went out of whack. What a nightmare! When I asked my sewing contractor how he managed with his professional sergers, he said the same thing. He spent all day going from table to table, fixing his machines. It was a full time job just keeping them running. It's a surprise that any garments ever got to the retailers.
Honestly, I'd seriously rethink the serger purchase, unless you really have a need for that kind of seam finishing, or you work with stretch fabrics a lot.
And that's my 2 cents.
~ Cindy
I have 2 sergers that are from the late 80s-early 90s....a Brother 526LCW & a Singer 14U44. Neither of these was a top-of-the-line model. Both have seen heavy use since they were new....no trouble with either of them. Both were/are used on wovens & knits both for seam finishing & sewing entire garments. I probably use my sergers 25+ hours a week.
Just about everyone I know (I work in a fabric store) has sergers (many different brands & ages). And they have no problems with them.
About 20 years ago, I worked in the garment industry....both in the factory & as a samplemaker in the design room. No problems there either. In fact my mother was using a serger in a factory in the 30s (yeah, in the industry they had sergers even earlier than this. They called them merrow machines or overlockers then) & as far as I know, there were no problems there either. I'm at a loss to figure out why your experience was soooooo totally different!