Oh So Close

Remember the saying "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades"? Sometimes close is good enough, sometimes it seems it misses by a mile.

This past weekend I finally got an answer from Steve about the Necchi BF: he was going to take a pass on it. What? The longest stitch came in only at 6.5 stitches per inch instead of 6 stitches per inch? Seriously? I was disappointed but didn't want to sell him a sewing machine he didn't want. Just the next day I get a phone call asking to see the Singer 115 with gingerbread or Tiffany decals. It wasn't too much of a problem since I had a 2 pm appointment for serger repair but that should give plenty of time before their 4 pm appointment. It wouldn't even be close but then my serger visitor didn't come until 3 pm and the Singer 115 appointment came a little early. Yup, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades as they were both wanting my attention. As luck would have it, the Singer 115 wouldn't turn on via the knee control. I just couldn't figure it out...until I saw the loose wire. Well, that wasn't going to be a quick job so I asked if they would be interested in another sewing machine and what they were trying to sew. Wouldn't you know it, they liked the Necchi BF and bought it after about 5 minutes of  looking and comparing to a Singer 15-91 at twice the price. Guess that was an easy decision.

Necchi BF

Meanwhile, the serger problem persisted and it wasn't going to get fixed quickly either . She didn't mind coming back for it because I also had her daughter's sewing machine that wasn't working quite right: both could be picked up over the weekend. Here's the little attachment that was added to this Singer 5511: a micro-serger.

I had a couple of these and could never get them to work so I was tempted to just write them off a not-too-great attachments. Then I looked further and found a nice set of instructions on how to use them, pros and cons, so I went back to try this out again with a more serious attempt to get it to work. It took a couple of tries until I could get it to work right:

Since this model wasn't my own, I got out mine and tried it on a Brother Select-o-matic. It also took several tries but it did finally work. Here are the steps I went through:

Step 1: cut edge of fabric next to where you want the zigzag to be.

Step 2: feed into foot with cut tag feeding into the right side

Step 3: Look closely to see zigzag stitches made over the stitch finger

Step 4: keep stitching , holding fabric straight

Finished edge: okay but not great

Some of the commenters thought it worked just fine but others said it sure wasn't like a serger and I would have to agree. Maybe theirs worked much better than mine but I did try two different ones and even have a third model that works with a snap-on foot shank:

Snap-on foot model of a serger foot

For the Brother sewing machine I needed to put it in the right needle position so it wouldn't hit the stitch finger on the new foot but that was okay, just not a very wide zigzag. It's a way to finish off seams, I guess, but give me a serger any day! It is supposed to be close to a serger in it's ability to cut and stitch at the same time but then

 close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.