SF
When To Serge a Seam
Suzy FurrerDescription
When using a serger to finish the seam allowance edges of a project, do you serge the edges first before sewing the seam, or serge the edges after the seam is sewn? Suzy Furrer discusses this question of when to serge a seam.
Serging to finish raw edges before or after sewing the seam depends on how you will be pressing the seam allowances— open, or to one side. This factor depends mostly on the weight of the fabric. Lightweight fabrics tend to be pressed to one side, while heavier weight fabrics should be pressed open, to reduce bulk.
On a seam that will be pressed to one side, sew the seam first, then serge the raw edges together. On a seam that will be pressed open, stitch the seam first, then serge the raw edges independently, which will also help reduce bulk in the project.
It’s important to keep the serger knife out of the way when finishing seam allowances using a serger, to maintain the raw edges for even seam allowances.
For more on using a serger, check out these helpful videos:
Getting to Know Your Serger
Serger: Beyond the Basics
Serger Seam Allowances
Do you surge a seam before or after you sew that seam? Let me explain. I'm Susie Fir. First of all, let's talk about the surger. The machine is called a surger.
The stitch it makes is called an overlock stitch. Sometimes those terms are used interchangeably. So I want to clarify that. So to our question of, do you surge before or after you sew a seam? That depends on how you press a seam.
If you're pressing a seam open, you are going to cut your pattern, cut your fabric, you are going to surge your edges and then you're going to sew your seam. If you are going to press your seams to one side, you are going to cut your fabric, you are going to sew your seam and then you're going to surge the edges together. If you're pressing to one side, you don't want to have the two edges surge separately because when it goes to one side, that's creating too much bulk, you don't need that. You want these seas to act as, as one. So you're gonna surge them together to reduce bulk and to have them uh kind of move in the same way they're attached together now.
So, in thinking of this too, you might think. Ok. Well, when do I know if I'm going to press open or press to one side that is determined by the weight of the fabric generally, but not always. But generally if you have a medium to heavyweight fabric, you're gonna press those seams open to reduce bulk. If you have a sheer to a lightweight fabric, you're generally gonna press those seams to one side because it's going to, you're going to get a little shadow probably through the fabric.
It looks neater more tailored if those seams are pressed to one side. So that is how you determine whether you are going to surge before you sew the seam or after you sew the seam, you wanna, you want to keep the knife of the surger away from your, your garment. So you want to push you, you wanna be able to push that fabric this way and then surge, keep, keep that, um, garment away from the knife on the surger. And then if you're surging, um, before you sow, that's really easy to go in with that piece, surge it and then sew the seam. So the goal is always keep that, keep that knife out of the way.
All right. So there's your answer of whether you surge before you sow a seam or after you sew a seam
Suzy - The subject line of my NSC email and of the video both spell "serge" improperly as "surge." Someone should fix the error...