A thread story

I had hoped last night to finish serging the edges of the black and white jacket but I got distracted by an e-mail which led to some research and discussion of the Fiat plant which opened in Poughkeepsie in 1910.  That discussion pretty much used up my sewing time, and G was ready for bed, but I begged a little extra time to do my serging.

I shouldn’t have bothered.  The serger jammed up again after a few inches.  This seems to have been the norm with this project so I shut everything down and decided that the serger and I needed to spend some quality time together this afternoon.

I had a sneaking suspicion I knew the nature of the problems, and after I managed to fix it the first time, I spent some extra time playing with the machine.  Yes my suspicions were correct.  It was a thread problem.

I know people whose sergers don’t care what thread goes into them, but me, I’m familiar with thread problems.  My first serger was a lovely machine, I could thread it mid-seam and we constructed a lot of garments together.  But it was very particular about thread.  It only liked Mettler.  Anything else and it jammed.  So I always bought Mettler thread, and I gave away everything else.  Then I discovered Mettler’s finer serger thread, Metrolene, and I loved it.  It gave the finest finished edges, even on sheer fabrics.    But Mettler stopped making Metrolene,  I bought a big supply at that time, and most of it is gone, except for six colors. 

I guess I hadn’t used any of the Metrolene on the new serger, which I have now had a year or a little better.  But I used it on this job.  It was the only kind of white serger thread I had in stock; I guess I haven’t sewn anythng white and I am fairly picky about matching my serger thread to my project.

Anyway, the thread kept popping out of its guides as I was serging, and the Metrolene is so fine I have trouble seeing it, especially the white threads.  As soon as I ran regular serger thread through the machine everything worked perfectly; if I switched out one thread, it started acting up and I couldn’t get it readjusted to work. This serger doesn’t seem to care about the quality or brand of the thread itself, I even tested it with Maxi-Loc which just stopped my older serger cold, It handles fuzzy nylon and various embroidery and specialty threads, but it doesn’t seem to like the really fine thread, at least not the Metrolene.  But then, perhaps it is just me.

So the remainder of my Metrolene collection is going bye-bye:

Mettler Metrolene thread 2000 m spools
color 792     navy — 4 spools
color 003     black  — 5 spools
color 739     red — 4 spools
color 632     gray — 4 spools
color 692 l    ight beige — 4 spools
color 619     brown  bronze —  4 spools

If anybody reading this wants any of the thread, leave a comment; it just needs a good home.  If not I will put it up on e-bay after Thanksgiving.