Yay Serger!

Hi all!

I went and fetched my serger yesterday. I'm sure the repair man thought I was a bit odd when I hugged the serger upon seeing her.

I did get a mild scolding for the crappy thread I had in my serger. He didn't even give me back two of the three cones of thread I had. I guess they were too crappy. Yeah, I know. He recommended Maxi-Lock, which is a decent thread at the very least, but I'm going through all my Mom's old cone thread right now and when that's good and used up, I'm going to get Gutermann thread only. Yeah all! I'm gonna pimp my serger with the Gute! I have a cone of Gute in navy that I use nearly all the time because its such a wonder to sew with. Oh, I totally get using good thread, but I only buy thread in cones, and I have all that thread I inherited...

Moving on...

She was all cleaned and ready for use, but when something is repaired, I forget that you rarely get back what you had. She now makes different noises. She's louder for one. Her motor now makes a hissing noise, and its VERY powerful. Not a complaint, but different. The feed dogs now take points! I'm happy about that. Before, when I fed her pointed pieces of fabric, she's bunch them up beneath her foot. Now she soars over them, no problem.

Still, when you get used to one thing, getting used to something else is a challenge. For me it's mainly the louder thing. I have a thing about noise anyway (my neighbors are a** holes with noise, long story). But all in all I'm very happy to have her back.

So much so that I was working on my new dress all day. I'm still thinking on the Air Raid business (I'll post part 3 of the booklet next week). So in the interim, Im taking some brown wool crepe I have and doing another dress from my 30's repro.

The first time I made this dress I didn't have my slopers. So this time I can make a better fit with just some minor tweaking.

I just love the bodice on this dress, and I have some great fabric that will work with the design splendidly! I love the darkness of the background of the fabric compaired to the brown and navy dots.

I backed the fabric, because it's a cotton/rayon blend with a brown cotton. Crepe can be a heavy fabric, and this cotton is pretty light, so this will give the patterned fabric some more strength as the dress is hanging from my shoulders.

I also decided to switch up the sleeves a bit.

I'm sure you remember this sleeve pattern I posted some months ago.

I used view 7. I just loved that cut out, and thought that the patterned fabric would look fantastic with that crepe. It does!

As of now I've cut out, and overlocked everything but the skirt. I almost didn't have enough crepe. The sleeve is a strange wide shape, so I had to cut the solid part in half on the grain line in order to make it fit. A small alteration that most likely won't show. I plan on starting construction tomorrow. Yay!

Still no home internet. I'm getting angry now. I think I'll call ATT and give them my angry voice...again.