crochet thread+serger=true love

I’ve been wanting to try different types of threads in my machine.  I’d read that if you can thread it, you can use it.  More or less.  Other than regular, boring old thread, I only had elastic and a little bit of crochet thread.  
So I started doing some Googling and whatnot and found some pretty awesome ideas for using crochet thread in your serger.

I started with my one and only skein of crochet thread (I don’t crochet.  I bought it long ago for a now-forgotten project) and a couple of empty thread spools.

I wound the thread around two of the spools until the spools were full

While my baby played with the other empty spools

 

I used the spool caps to hold the smaller spools in place on the serger spindles

And then my baby helped me thread the machine

Just thread it as you normally would for a 3Thread, left needle setting

With the crochet thread in the upper and lower looper spots and regular thread in the left needle.

Set your machine with the stitch length and width at the highest setting, no differential feed, and disengage the knife

Thread tension should be the loopers both at zero and the left needle at a slightly tighter than average setting

Place your fabric, right side up, under the presser foot and about 1/8 inch to the right of the needle

Sew

Pretty cool.

Now place the fabric back under the foot, this time with the edge of the serging just to the right of the needle so that you’re creating a new chain off the side, but still attached to the previous chain

I used that hole on my presser foot as a guide to try to keep things straight

Now this is messy, but it was my first run.

Keep going, adding chains off the side of the previous chains

If you adjust your looper tension, you’re supposed to be able to get a ruffled effect
I ran out of thread on my handwound spool before I could do much with this, but you can kind of see it starting to ruffle

And then my baby got bored with the empty spools, so I ran out of time.  But I read you’re supposed to be able to just do this without attaching it to fabric, by just starting with a basic chain on your serger

And adding from there.  Heck! I think this could make a fun little trim all by itself.

But if you do make just the threaded chain (or cut what you made off of the original fabric for time saving purposes…), you can do some fun stuff like

Add it to the edge of a finished item for a fun update

Or roll it and make a rosette for a broach, hair clip, or whatever

I’m totally stocking up on crochet thread the next time I’m at the store.  I have some ideas I’m excited to try out!