Have you ever found yourself  “eating crow”?  I have and I sure don’t like to acknowledge it, let alone admit it out loud very often.  Recently, I found myself in such a humiliating situation but have only mentioned it to a few.  Well, they say that confession is good for the soul …

There is one thing that I know that I do well, not the best by any means, but well, and that is sewing and machine embroidery (Notice that I added MACHINE before the word EMBROIDERY ). Rarely will I allow myself to even entertain the thought of being intimidated by a project, technique, or a machine. After all, a machine is nothing more than a white box with buttons on it, right?

Well that’s what I thought until I received my first serger. In 1986, as a gift from my father, I was very fortunate to receive one of the first top of the line five thread sergers available for the home market. “What a great piece of technology!,” I raved.  Even though it was a beautiful machine, and greatly appreciated, that beast caused me more grief and tears than I care to recount.  The use of my first serger brought me about as much joy as buying a door stop — need I say more?  I know that many of you have had that same experience.

Once that machine was traded in for a newer model, a weight lifted from my shoulders and I vowed to never be beaten by a machine again. So I succeeded! I reveled! I won! No longer did I ever see the need to fret over threading. As time passed, no longer did I even succumb to serger frustration. After all, using a serger is all really simple once you get used to it. It seemed so easy to me …  or so I thought.

I have mentioned many times that when I was first introduced to the Baby Lock Sergers last year, I was very impressed with the functionality, technology, and patents that make the Baby Lock Sergers so great plus the Air Jet threading is pretty cool, too. After using the Baby Lock Evolution for a bit, I realized how easy it truly is to switch from one task and stitch style to another. Gone are the days of threading in a certain order and all those other laborious rules, but now here comes my “eating crow” moment.

One day I was working on a project that would require one of the specialty feet that came with the machine. I found myself hesitating, “Did I really need to drag that foot out? What about changing the needle position and threading?  Wouldn’t it just be easier to do it on my machine?” Then it hit me.

I actually had been intimidated by the serger that I thought that I had mastered. Although it was subconscious, my own mind had been holding me back.  I was reacting as if switching the foot and threading was going to take me a long time and be a hassle. Well, no more!  Once I realized that my own mind was transferring my old serger angst to this wonderful new machine, which had never done anything to deserve that type of stigma, I was able to let go of those old notions and change my attitude. Then I proceeded to successfully attach the foot and made all the adjustments necessary to get on with my project.

Separate what was your experience from what your experiences will become. Your old serger, the one that is the cause of your frustration, is not at all like the technology that is offered to you today. Put the old view out of your mind and be open to a whole new wonderful experience.  If  you have a serger that scares you or never sees the light of day, you owe it to yourself to sit down and check out how truly different a new Baby Lock Serger with ExtraordinAir Threading System™ is — it’s not just talk.

-Reva