Are You Being Served? Part 1
A quick word to the readers who aren’t Singaporean: Singapore’s service industry has a longstanding poor reputation. It’s something locals always compare and complain about. So a group of people are trying to do something to hopefully make some difference.
Are You Being Served? is an initiative started by Singapore Tourism Board and I’m so pleased to be a small part of it. For me, I get to experience service (good or bad) mostly when I dine out. I hardly shop in stores and generally am a ‘i-will-look-for-it-myself’ kind of a shopper. At restaurants, I’m usually partial to servers because I know most of them are doing it part-time so it’s easy to simply treat it as a job and not a job you love. I worked in the F&B line while in school too so I can speak for myself at least. I am digressing… So! When asked to think up a mission to put our service industry to the test, I didn’t want to do food as I might be able to predict the outcome so the next best thing was to try something real, something which I meant to do myself with or without this mission.
Industry: Retail {Electronics}
Mission details: I want to get educated on the different types of sewing machines out there in the market. As a beginner, I’m definitely looking for something pretty entry-level but not too basic. But more importantly I want to find out the difference between a serger and an overlock sewing machine, what are the factors I should be considering – maybe someone who sews clothing and someone who makes curtains require different types of machines? In my head I’m thinking of how I’ve come to learn to choose between a DSLR and a point-and-shoot camera, I’ve learnt what to look out for and what I have to compromise on. So with this mission, I’m really hoping to get in tuned with sewing machines!
Service skill to test: Knowledge of product and possibly personal experience
Estimated expense (SGD): $0 because I’m window shopping!
I will be carrying out my mission next week and to be fair, I won’t be testing some sales guy who unfortunately was lurking around the sewing machines department in Harvey Norman or Courts. So check back next week to find out how it all goes down!
P.S. If you know about sewing machines, you’re most welcome to share your knowledge and experiences!
Hi Melly, love your blog!
Anyway, an overlocker and a serger are the same things. Basically, countries like the US refer to them as ‘sergers’, whereas countries like Australia and the UK prefer the term ‘overlocker’. They’re usually pretty expensive and complicated at first, so if you’re wanting to just do home-sewing, maybe get one that’s basic, but not too basic (haha!) first. In my experience, the various zig-zag stitches manage to give a satisfactory finish to my items, without resorting to overlocking.
Then again, I’m not a professional seamstress or anything, I mainly make clothes for myself
Mine’s a Janome J1012 by the way.
Also, if you’re wanting to sew curtains or heavy fabrics like denim fairly frequently, you may want to consider a heavy duty machine.
Wee, sorry this comment ended up so long! I hope you get what you need
oooh i have so much to say! i don’t normally comment but i got so excited when u mentioned sewing machine!
firstly, buy a sewing machine that is heavy, because that means it is stable
the important stitches are the straight and zigzag ones. i would recommend the sakura brand or the brother brand.
paying more for a sewing machine will get u more variety of stitches or functions like embroidering (these can go up to 1K). but speaking from personal experience, the fancy stitches are really no big deal
i paid about $500 for a sakura machine with about 25 stitches. i love that it has a built in magnet for me to attach needles and cute japanese words at the side heehee! its not really “heavy duty” but when i want to sew thick material, i use a thicker needle
sergers are handy for clothing, to prevent the edges from fraying, i tink!
i am sewing machine queen.
u can use the overlock to prevent fraying and also to sew stretch materials like jerseys in tshirts etc. quite handy, but it’s a completely different machine from the regular straight stitch one.
how much are you thinking of investing in this?
the brands i really recommend are juki, brother and janome.
buy the home sewing ones if you are just going if you are just going to use it once in a while. most better home sewing machines now, have no problems sewing other thicker fabrics too, but you need to just buy changes of needles either way.
i have a janome home sewing machine and a juki semi-pro, which is basically an industrial machine but not the ugly huge green ones. it has the same power though. it cost me about us$800 but i’ll be using it for years. my other janome one i bought when i was in japan before i started school at bunka, and regretted because if i’d waited i would have bought a juki or brother one from bunka itself. however, it’s still a pretty good machine, but you can really feel the difference when sewing with a home machine and an industrial.
if you are going to be sewing for a long time and really picking the skill up, then you might as well invest in a better one.
i don’t think all the fancy stitches matter unless you are planning on doing quilting or something. so don’t bother with those!!
how exciting, Melly! i first heard about it on radio. i thought it’s already over. i;ve been in the service line all my life, if we’re talking frontline. iactually, all of us are in the business, in one way or another.
it’s so coincident: i just received an article about the state of our country’s service standards yesterday. if you’re interested to have a read, let me know.
this is great.
ive been thinking of investing in a sewing machine but i have zero knowledge on this.
i will definitely be interested in your findings
We have something similar here called Mystery Shoppers where people pose as shoppers in certain shops and write reviews of the service they get.
The sewing machine mission is definitely a good one. I would love to learn how to sew one day. Good luck with it!
Thanks for all the advice and help ladies! I’ve noted everything down and it’s gonna be SO SO helpful :]