Home » Sewing Tips and Techniques » Skills » How To Remove Serger Stitches the Easy and Fast Way
by Melissa Mora 8 Comments
Have you ever wondered how to undo serger stitches without ripping them out one by one? Here’s how!
Hey y’all, today I’m sharing an answer to one of your sewing questions, a quick tip on how to easily remove serger stitches. There’s a fast trick to undo an overlock stitch and I’ve got both a video tutorial and a picture/written tutorial. You’ll see how to undo a serged seam on your fabric without having to use a seam ripper and ripping every single stitch.
P.S. If you’re looking for how to seam rip straight stitches from a regular sewing machine, check out this post.
Anatomy of a 4 Thread Overlocker Stitch
Most of the time, my serger has two needle threads and two loopers threaded to do a 4-thread overlock stitch. So the tutorial I’m showing today will cover how to remove that. The same technique can be used to remove a 3-thread overlock stitch, you’d just skip the first step.
In order to understand how we’re going to remove all this stitching without making a mess, it’s important to understand what an overlock stitch looks like on the raw edge of the fabric. So I’ve got an image below.
If you look at the threads in the image above, I have hot pink thread on the left needle, blue on the right needle, white on the upper looper, and black on the lower looper. The pink and blue needle threads are much easier to see on the right side of the fabric than on the wrong side of the fabric. And the lower looper threads are barely visible on the right side.
When you’re unpicking the seam, you want to make sure you’re doing it with the right side of the stitching up. And since your threads will not likely be different colors like mine in the image above, it’s easiest to look for the side that has the two lines of straight stitching.
How To Remove Serger Stitches (Fast!)
I made a video showing how to quickly undo serging threads. You can watch it below or on YouTube here if you prefer. If you like the written tutorial, scroll below the video.
Time needed:5 minutes
How to Remove Serger Stitches
- Place your fabric right side up. Locate the right needle thread.
Place the tip of your seam ripper, a straight pin, or the tip of your scissors under a stitch from the right needle thread. This is the line of straight stitching closest to the edge of the fabric.
- Remove the right needle thread.
Using the seam ripper, straight pin or scissors loosen one stitch to the right side. Pull gently until the thread comes out of the entire seam. It will look like image 2 above when the thread is removed.
- Locate the left needle thread.
The left needle thread stitches are easiest to grab between the loops of the upper looper thread. Find one, loosen with a seam ripper, pin or scissors, and pull that thread out.
- Remove the looper stitches.
Once you have the threads from the left and right needles removed, the looper stitches will pull off like magic, since nothing is holding them any longer.
This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. All affiliate links are identified with (affiliate link) after the link or a commissions earned statement above the link(s).
Tips and Tricks
And that’s how you undo serger stitches the easy way! Here are some more tips and tricks to remove serger stitches.
- This seam ripper (affiliate link) is my favorite one. It has an easy to grip handle and when you’re ripping a seam from a regular sewing machine the end comes in handy to pick out all the extra little threads.
- On a long seam, you may find it easier to use your seam ripper to cut the needle threads in a few places and remove the overlocking a section at a time.
- If you have a thread tail on your seam still, you can locate the needle threads in it and start pulling. This only works if the tail hasn’t been stretch to the point where you can’t tell which thread is which.
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Reader Interactions
Comments
Jill
Thank you for this! Now, if I could only have back all the hours I spent ripping out overlook stitches one by one….😬😆
Thank you for showing me this simple and clean way to remove serger stitches.
I have spent lots of time removing them a little at a time in the past. This is
a time saver for sure.Reply
Joyce Eustace
I am 81 and have been sewing since I was 15 I have had an overlocker for many year’s and this is absolutely the 👌 explanation on removing overlooking stitches I have ever seen thank you so very much.
Reply
olivia
I am 70 years old and never knew this. If only I could get the time back I wasted from unstitching serger threads I would probably have 30 more years to live…lol
Reply
dan
This is a great post. Such a time saver. I also discovered this few years a go.
I still can pick seam with stretched out tails. You just have to ignore the wavy ones (loopers). Failing that go back to the overlock is a bit more regularly formed and lift the needle (locking) threads from there from there. An alternative is cut the looper threads where recognisable up pick them, only by pulling side ways for a few stitches then the locking (needle) threads will be revealed -the shorter ones.Reply
Finally, a great tip! I have been sewing for 65 years & did not know this! Thanks so much!
Reply
Jan
Thank you sooo much, wish I had know this earlier!!!
Reply
Beth
Thank you! It’s helpful, I finally looked into this!! You also explained it very well!!
Reply
