Plan C

Do you remember the Hong Kong finish I was going to use in my Simplicity 2150 jacket? Yes, I remember it, too. I also remember that I had abandoned that plan, Plan A, if you will, because the flannel bias strips that looked so pretty were phenomenonally hard to work with. So I advanced to Plan B, overlocking the seam allowances of the jacket, which I thought would be fast and still be interesting if I used contrasting thread.

Plan B was scary for me, because I don't have a lot of experience using my serger, despite having owned it for roughly 15 years. Maybe longer. The knife terrifies me. It's sharp and it moves fast and no one has ever made the mistake of calling me coordinated. So I worry about ruining garments and I worry about ruining fingers. That's the potential for a double whammy as I'm reasonably certain that, were I to cut off a finger while serging a garment, I would also ruin the garment.

Anyway, I pulled out my serger and stitched up a sample. Call me crazy, but that looked pretty darned good to me. Thus reassured that Plan B was The Answer, I started on my jacket seam allowances and...disaster. Okay, not on the magnitude of , say, an asteroid striking the earth, but, you know, almost. There were no tears, but it was close.

So it was back to the sample scrap, where I barely tweaked some of the settings and serged all the edges again. I serged slowly; I serged fast. I barely skimmed the edges with the knives and I trimmed off full seam allowances, all with beautiful results.

So I - stupidly...go ahead and say you; you know you're thinking it - tried it again on the jacket, again with disastrous results.

Take a look at the photos I've included below and tell me what you think, because I'm at a loss; I've serged the edges of my rather large sample scrap until it's roughly 4" by 4" and have been unable to recreate the abnormal stitching.

Any ideas on what might make my serger act as though it's demon possessed? 

 

And all of this brings me to Plan C, which is really Plan A...but without the flannel.

Adding to the Pattern Stash

Because you can never have enough, right?

Simplicity patterns were on sale at Joann today for $1.99 so of course I had to make a special trip to pick up a few items from my wish list.

I picked up six patterns for $11.94, a savings of $87.76 off retail. Not that anyone actually pays the marked price, do they? I don't think so. I hope not.

Of the six patterns, four are for jackets or coats.

S2150: I've been lusting after this one since I first saw it last month. I like View A, the denim jacket.



S2508: The white one is awfully similar to a coat my daughter's been wanting.



S2560: Oh, won't I just be the trendsetter in this one!

S2341: I have BIG PLANS for this one. More on that another time.



The other two patterns are for tops.

S2364



S2594

Two of the patterns - 2560 and 2364 - call for knits, which is pretty unusual for me. I really need to get over the fear of my serger and I love these two patterns enough that they just might motivate me to do that.

The Mother of Invention

You know the old saying about necessity being the mother of invention and at my house today, that really is the case. You may think this is a picture of a lowly piece of crochet cotton and a tapestry needle; in reality, it's a highly effective, albeit not particularly user-friendly, tube turner.

There's nothing like being in the middle of a project and finding you don't have a tool you need to maintain forward momentum to get your thinking cap warmed up. In my case, I had four skinny tubes to turn in order to make spaghetti straps for a dress. AK over at PatternReview suggested serging a long thread chain before stitching the seam. That wouldn't work for me; I have had a serger for the last 10 or 12 years, but I don't believe I've ever used it for anything other than practice. Anyway, the thread chain gave me this idea and it was off to the races.