Cover stitch...

Once again we are starting to teach new students to use the cover stitch machines and once again one particular person keeps breaking them. I came in one morning and saw 3 of these signs under the presser feet of 3 cover stitch machines:

Well just so you know a cover stitch does not have a bobbin it in fact has a looper. And once I slid back the cover of the machines I found thread wadded up and wrapped around the inner workings like so:

A good 2 hours spent taking a razor to all that thread. After all the machines were rethreaded and sewing properly, I went to class and came back to see the graduate student on the machine with a tool box next to her. She managed to put it out of working order within 55 minutes. After explaining to her what exactly she needs to do when sewing with it she once again put a different machine out of working order. I have hit the tipping point, I have been tried my hardest to tolerate her and teach her but if she doesn't wish to learn I wont waste my time. There may be a few pictures of her crying in the near future. 

Though I'm younger than you...

You that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desks

I just want you to know 

I can see through your masks.

Little Bob Dylan reference for you all. This goes back to the higher up people who work in their office and desk and think they know how to fix machines and end up doing more harm than good like so:

I have seen this too much, and it doesn't have to get this bad until someone says "Hey, this isn't stitching right." This was a chain reaction to this lovely 406 bottom cover stitch, one of the needles broke and was replaced. When someone tried to sew with it the looper skipped stitches due to the fact that the needle wasn't positioned perfectly straight and that it wasn't in the most up right position. So the brilliant mind who put the needle in incorrectly decided there was a tension issue and instead of changing the tension she decided to wrap the thread around a tension disk 3 times...Which led her to thing that you could sew with out any fabric under the needles like a chain stitch and we see the product of her destruction above. And that is why I started this post with the song "Masters of War" by Bob Dylan, and I quickly corrected her mistake and that machine is running better than ever.

Pins

I think I spend way too much time in the sewing lab, I have gotten to the point where I can be doing my own work and listen to someone sewing and can tell if they are using pins or not. The slow short bursts of stitching, the inconsistent speed they have, and that beautiful sound a machine makes when the needle breaks from a pin and the metal shrapnel is blocking the moving parts and that loud obnoxious warning sound goes off.
Pins are awesome if you like to slow down productivity, break machines, and decrease efficiency. If the pattern is notched correctly, there is no need for pins. If machine operators are getting paid per piece, they spend more time completing parts instead of taking out pins/increasing handling time, which leads to a higher pay. Also less broken needles or machine parts and saves the factory money. Moral of the story, keep the pins for your bug collection and not any where near a sewing machine.

515 4-Thread Safety Stitch

Double needle, double trouble

Well one of the assignments that is given to my students is to sew a pair of jeans. It is a great learning process, they learn how to do a zipper fly, button holes, patch pockets, and a slew of other techniques that can be used on other applications and garments. Most of the work is done with a 515 and a double needle lock stitch. For that double needle, we have a pretty nice Durkopp machine. An awesome German machine, real straight forward and easy to thread and super durable. But like the saying goes, "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" and there were a few set backs. The first being the bobbin pin that holds the bobbin/bobbin case in place snapped off. Someone didn't thread the bobbin correctly, and a bunch of the top needle thread wrapped underneath the bobbin, wrapped around the pin and broke the stainless steal piece clean off. Normally a typical 24-27 tex thread wouldn't break that pin but working with 60 tex, you are looking at a pretty hefty force. $365 later it was fixed and I stressed to the students how crucial it is to thread the bobbin correctly and push that pin tab down.
Smooth sailing until this beauty happened:

Oh yes, that pin was in the upright position and look at that nicely wound birds nest of thread. This is no fun to fix, always keep a nice sharp knife or razor blade with you. Just shy of an hour to fix that, just remember, if you are in a rush it is best to take your time and make sure everything is threaded properly, it'll help in the long run. Through my experience about 70% of the problems are due to improper threading.

Sewing Sabotage

Industrial sewing machines are great, fast, efficient, and are able to handle a wide range of fabrics and human errors. So I have seen my fair share of broken needles, 301 lock stitches with thread wrapped around the bobbin pin due to the lack of a bobbin... The usual but last semester there was a great deal of over the top repairs I had to do. This happens because people aren't trained properly and it leads to a drop in productivity, money spent to get new parts, and some times injuries.
The first problem is with a 406 bottom cover stitch machine. Someone didn't thread the bottom looper correctly which led to a huge wad of thread I had to take a razor blade to.

Due to that wad up and improper threading of the looper, the bottom cover stitch didn't catch. Because the person that tried to fix it thought the looper was threaded correctly became frustrated and kept sewing creating a wad of thread right by the needles. And out of anger someone tried to fix it by prying at it with a screw driver bending a stainless steal presser foot and not pictured are the 2 needles that person broke too. My students know not to try to fix anything, and no one else was using a cover stitch machine so my suspicions were pointed towards someone. This was a fairly cheap fix, I replaced the needles, cut out all the thread from the moving parts, threaded the looper correctly and was able to bend back the presser foot. It took me about 4 hours but it was a good learning experience.

Welcome!

Hello everyone,

This is a blog dedicated to my struggles and frustrations down in the sewing lab. Some funny stories, some moments of great insight, some videos about threading, common machine problems, and a fair deal of me rambling on.
A brief background, I am a teachers assistant down in a sewing lab at a fairly large university. I have had this position for 3 years, and no I am not a graduate student I am a senior. This sadly is the first year I didn't get paid due to budget cuts but they decided to hire a grad student who does absolutely nothing but break machines (I will get to this in later posts) and reaps the rewards of my hard work. As you can imagine there is a good deal of hostility, anger and as one student stated "You have a pretty big F-off bubble." But I still worked hard keeping order in the lab and fixing everything that was broken, while the grad student sat in her office...