What the hell is an overlocker?!

Okay, so I was trying to explain to my mum what an overlocker is and does, and she seemed to find it quite hard to wrap her head around. While explaining it to her I took some pics and videos and figured I might as well share them here for those who are interested.

What does an overlocker do?

Pretty much all seams on commercial clothes were done by overlocker. Here are some examples from my home. Left to right, top to bottom: Hoodie, jeans, Katwise coat!!!, duvet cover, T-shirt, jeans pocket, microfibre cleaning cloth, rainbow jacket, blouse.

Okay. So show me this thing!

This is my Olaf. He’s an (old) Toyota sl3000, and a 3-thread overlocker (there are also 4-thread ones). Those three bobbins have 5000m of thread each! 😀

Three bobbins – wtf? Why? How?

*hehe* Here is an annotated close up of “where the magic happens”. There is one needle which “pierces” the fabric, and the two arms go back and forth and wrap the other threads around the fabric… somehow. :)) At the front, the excess fabric is cut off (tho tbh you can also just feed it in close and overlock the existing edge). Please disregard the dust and grime, Olaf spent eight years in some old lady’s garage (and he’s hard to clean without taking apart!).

Seeing this in action would be quite helpful.

I agree. So here’s a video. It doesn’t really help that much to be honest. If I had three colour bobbins I could show it better (to see in the end result which thread is actually where in the stitch). But I don’t (yet), I only have red and green. 😛 (I recommend viewing the video full screen to get some more detail.)

Anyway, I hope this was somewhat interesting all the same! 😀