Help! I am considering purchasing a Blind Stitcher machine. I am planning to retire soon and want to continue my sewing/embroidery/alteration business at home. I do not know which one to purchase! A local dealer is showing me a used Mercury blind hemmer. He says the Baby Lock Blind Hemmer is not a good choice as it is too light and breaks down easily. It has such a good instruction book, but I am concerned because of his comments about the edge finger breaking all the time, etc.
Any help anyone can give will be appreciated. If anyone has one for their small business-how often do you use it?
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I did alterations for a number of years while my children were growing up and can't imagine not having a blind hem machine. It saves an incredible amount of time and and I had very few problems with mine. I have the Babylock hemmer. I do experience some skipping occasionally with certain fabrics, but changing needles often pretty much eliminates that. You won't want to hem very bulky corduroy or denim with any blind hemmmer. Even the commercial hemmers won't take kindly to the bulk and the garments always look better top-stitched anyway. I hope your bussiness is fruitful. Few people do alterations anymore but then in a disposable society, fewer people buy quality apparel and bother to have it altered. I still go for quality.
Thanks for your kind reply! I was beginning to think I was never going to get anything helpful.
Will you be so kind as to email me at my home e-mail also: [email protected]
I have more questions maybe you can answer. Do you find it easy to change the needle? Do you use the average kind or do you order the special ones for it?
Have you had any bad luck with the edge finger (?) getting broken? My dealer has scared me away from this one and thinks I should have the heavier Mercury one. But it is so old and does not have a good instruction book. How do you tie off your hems when you finish? do you overlap or do you cut the thread at the looper and then tie the ends?
I'm also in the market for a blind hemstitch machine. Any info you might pass on would be greatly appreciated.
I haven't received as much input as I would have liked, so I have not decided yet either. I will try ot pass on the couple of good tips that I did get--or did you see them posted?
I have the blindhemmer (same one as the Babylock). I just got mine the begining of this month and love it. To lock the stitch you pull the fabric toward the back and then cut. This is probably where the stitch finger may get broken. But mine hasn't and I've pulled hard a few times and I haven't heard of anyone else having that problem. The hem is overlapped a few stitches. The blindhemmer's stitches are great once you get it set right.
Did you ever try to sew the binding around anything like a quilt? It was advertised in Nancy's Notions catalog that this was a good use for the machine. That would be a plus if the machine is heavy enough.
I may go ahead and get this one as it would be newer and under some warranty as the used one would not be.
I would hate to be hard on it and break the finger, though I can't see how this could happen very easily.
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