Babylock Evolve: Need Advice & Opinions

[NCHIN]

Hi, I knew I should not have entered the sewing shop. I dropped my friend off at a doctor's appointment and had time to kill. I walked into a Babylock and Elna shop that I have never been into before. I have only owned Bernina's & Husqvarna's and Pfaff's.

I tried their Evolve serger and I like it a lot more than I like my Husqvarna 936. I am about two steps from buying it.

Any opinions on this model? Please give me your likes and or dislikes.

Is the jet air threading all it is hyped up to be? Does it handle multiple layers well?

TIA

Nancy

[rubelin]

I've had my Evolve for 3.5 yrs now and I adore it.

Yes, the jet air threading is even more than it's hyped to be. It handles lots of layers well as far as sewing them, but the only drawback I have for the whole machine is that the knife doesn't really come up far enough to slice lots of layers well. My old machine was a Singer from the 80's that had a knife that lowered from the top so it could cut anything (even though it sewed crappy), but this one is like a hook and it's just not quite tall enough or deep enough. I tend to leave it lowered most of hte time anyway, and it's very easy to do that, even in the middle of sewing, like at the end of sewing around a doubler and you don't want to cut the sewing from the beginning.

So, besides the knife, everything else is super easy to use, the tension is always perfect with almost no effort (you just have to remember to set the stitch selector correctly), and I can change threads in less time than it takes to rethread my regular sewing machine

Oh, one other thing. I do a lot of sewing and use both the coverstich and overlock so much that I have decided to "downgrade" to seperate machines; an Imagine Wave (which has the feed dogs closer ot the needle so it can do tighter turns than the Evolve) and the Coverstitch machine, which both have the jet air threading and the Imagine has an auto needle threader, too.

There is a Yahoo group for BabylockSergers if you need more info