SEW Fearful of Serging

Nov 14, 2007

Ok…first let me say this…I’m a proficient seamstress.  I have awesome Husqvarna Viking sergers…two top-of-the line 936s (5 thread w/ coverstitch) and a 905.  And 9 times out of 10, it’s a breeze.  I serge away with no worries.  But there is that one time…you know what I mean…when you’ve got 40 yards of chiffon you need to gather down to a yard.  You’ve worked so hard to ensure all the gathers are just right.  So far, so good.

And then you get the brilliant idea to try a new technique.  You deviate from the original plan.

So I decide to put in buttonhole elastic inside of regular elastic.  Simple enough…or so you think.  You’ve misplaced the buttonhole elastic application instructions, so you make up your own method.  You start by making a buttonhole in the casing.  And then secure the buttonhole elastic in the seam…genius, I think.  But then you realize you’ll have to baste the waistband to the chiffon pettiskirt without catching the buttonhole elastic on the basting line.  So you start basting the waistband far enough away from the buttonhole elastic.  Too far from the buttonhole elastic.  So you baste again.  And then baste once more.  Ok, good…3 basting lines and now it works.  Time to serge it to reduce the bulk of the layers and finish it off nice.

And that’s where the fear of serging begins…

You notice the bed of the serger is dusty.  So you clean it…

Then you notice your serger has turquoise serger thread on it.

But you need pink serger thread…

So you tie off your pink threads to your turquoise threads.  You pull them through…thus avoiding rethreading those darn loopers.

And then you realize you’ve tied off the needle threads and not the loopers like you needed to do.  So now you’ll have to waste another 5 minutes rethreading the upper and lower loopers.

While rethreading the loopers, you notice the inside of the serger needs to be cleaned.

You look over to your work table and decide to clear all the cutter…

You put away the 17 spools of thread lying around next to your various sewing machines…

And then you notice the new flannel fabrics which need to be cut into lounge pants for the kids’ Christmas gifts…

It just adds to the never-ending list of sewing projects you’ll never get done in two lifetimes.  So you decide a little music may help your anxiety…

You look up and you notice the “guilt” sticker on your bulletin board…

So you finally get up the courage to approach the serger with the pettiskirt…

You serge ever so slowly…making sure the chiffon layers don’t get eaten by the serger blades…

Whew!  You can breath again…it’s looks like the serger stitches are good…

The moment of truth now arrives…it seems to have worked just fine.  So now you spend the next 10 minutes trying to pull the buttonhole elastic through the waistband casing…it’s like when you loose the drawstring in your hoodie.  And of course I can’t find my bobkin.  I think I threw it away, because it frustrated me…forever unhooking from the elastic right before I finished pulling it through the open hole in the casing.  Useless tool.  I know use a big safety pin…but it won’t work in this instance.  So I try my tweezers…success!  You now add your garment tag.

And then you need to sew on the button to hold the buttonhole elastic…

But you then realize the garment tag is in the way!

It’s at this point, you put the pettiskirt project off to the side until another day when you feel like getting the seam ripper out to remove the garment tag…and then starts the fear of seam ripping.

With friendship,

Lisa