Mock safety stitch, not so safe...

It is never good when a student comes up to you and says "That serger isn't stitching, the bobbin is wound and I don't know what is wrong with it." So a machine with loopers doesn't have a bobbin but it looks like it does when thread gets wrapped around the inter workings of a machine like so:

Are you serious? People's stupidity has increased exponentially in the last few weeks due to fashion shows and what not when wannabe designers think they know how to sew but instead break machines. If you don't know how to use a machine ask someone. This was about half the thread I had to cut out, a great 40 minutes I spent taking it all out:

Shag rugs and a 516 with a walking foot...

Well I believe it was 3 years ago a student tried to finish off the edges of her shag bathroom rug with a 516 machine with a walking foot. Well ever since then it hasn't worked all that great. You would have to force the fabric towards the beginning of the stitching for it not to get bunched up and rip your fabric.

Then I found this one morning and decided I needed to take apart the walking foot and see what was going on. With a decent amount of struggle I got the presser foot and walking foot. Found out the throat plate was slightly bent upward, so I had to fix that and inside the presser foot which had a lot of nylon fibers that caused the back end of it to add too much pressure to the beginning of the stitches. Just cough up $10-$20 and buy a new rug.

March Monday Madness!

Pretty blown away today at 10:15am on a Monday morning and saw these beauties. Machines unthreaded and left unthreaded, some broken, and one threaded completely wrong. Given the age range of 19-24, their small motor skills should be up to par to simply thread a needle or take a screw driver and replace a needle.

 Yes I do realize I ask too much for someone to thread a double needle lock stitch machine. It seems like the concept of threading from the inner side of the needle to the outer side blows people's minds.

This made me smile a little bit today.

515 unthreaded and jammed with thread, I know exactly who did it too. Heads will roll.

Wadded up thread in a tension disc, love it!

Another wadded up tension disc debacle.

Broken quick release presser foot...awesome.

Broken needle, also do you really need a line of blue tape to show you where 1/2" is on the throat plate? It is engraved on there.

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