Your opion wanted regarding sergers
 

I am thinking of buying a serger to use for quilting and sewing clothes, the stretchy type. What are your thought on sergers and what should I look for when I buy one? I am looking at both used and new sergers.

I've had one for years a babylock, recently upgraded to the Juki with air threading. Never used it for quilting but invaluable when garment sewing. Particularly if you like to sew with silks or knits. Gives the professional finish to seams of bought garments.

I like my sergers.

I use them for overcasting raw edges of fabric before washing it.

I also use them a lot for finishing the edges of bags and garments. The serged edges take away "that home-made look".

Which Juki did you buy? Do you think the air threading was worth it?

Here's a blog entry about what to look for in sergers. http://shesasewingmachinemechanic.bl...blog-page.html

We sell Juki and Bernina sergers where I work. The Juki 654 is a great machine that runs about $500. The Bernina 1150MDA is a nicer machine that costs about $1,100. Both have built-in rolled hem, tall thread rack and differential feed. The Bernina 800 DL runs around $900, if you can find one -- they've been discontinued by Bernina. The Juki air threader MO1000 kinda scares me, because if the air threader gets clogged, you can't manually thread your machine.

I have a Bernina with the automatic tension that I really like. I've never used it for quilting though. It would be very hard to get an accurate 1/4" seam and all the thread adds a lot of bulk.

It's great for edging fabrics so they don't ravel as you sew them and can be used in place of a sewing machine for some things. I make all my pajama pants exclusively on a serger.

I bought a 4-thread Bernina serger about 15-20 years ago, around the same time I bought my Bernina 1230 sewing machine.

If I had gotten air threading with my serger, I'm sure I would have used it a *lot* more to make clothing for my daughter. The serger was not something I used every day, so threading was a recurrent problem for me (even with tying threads together). As I have gotten older, getting the loopers threaded correctly has become even more of a challenge -- because my eyesight is not as good as it was, I cannot bend and turn and twist as easily as I used to, and my fine motor control is not quite as good as it used to be. If I had it to do over again (hindsight is so wonderful!) I would have paid the extra money to get a 5-thread machine with air threading.

5-thread means you can set the serger up to do a cover stitch (if you check the hem of a t-shirt, that is a cover stitch; two parallel lines on the front, a cut edge that is overcast with a zigzag on the back). This stitch helps make your garments look professionally finished, plus it speeds up garment construction -- especially if you plan on making lots of children's clothes.

Air threading is expensive but, in my opinion, it makes a serger much more user-friendly over the long-term. Things have changed over the years, but I believe Babylock has a good track record with air-threading sergers. I would never buy the all-singing-all-dancing sergers that are on the market today. They must be great for creative people; however, I know all those options would simply confuse me.

If buying used, you want to make sure that the serger has differential feed. Differential feed is extremely helpful when sewing on stretchy fabrics, and there are old sergers out there that do not have differential feed.

Edit: For me, setting and re-setting thread tensions was not an issue so I would not see automatic tensions as being something I would pay for. But I would pay for air threading!

I went with a lower end Janome machine. Absolutely love it. I would be a "little" concerned about a used one only because if someone didn't use it nicely things can get bent. I haven't run into anything like that but I have heard stories.

With that said, as long as they can show you how to thread (the most important and usually what gives some people hissy-fits) and it works well, go for it.

I don't use mine often, but when I do it is worth EVERY cent as it has saved me a kajillion hours of time :)
Good luck!

I got the Brother 1034D. It is easy enough to thread. I found a video tutorial on line. It was about $200. I use it regularly.

I've got the original Babylock Imagine with air threading. It comes with a very narrow gauge wire and loop to thread with if the air gets blocked. It can also be purchased from any dealer.

As Juki made Babylocks originally, I should think Juki would also have something to use if air fails.
I'd check with a dealer.