Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Shinny new toy

I finally opened up the box for my brand new serger! It's a Brother 1034D. I haven't done much with it besides change the thread and test it on a small bit of fabric. I cant wait to use it more during my coat project. Then we'll see what it can do by playing with the gather foot that came with it.

Fresh from the thread change. You can see my regular machine in the background.

My test piece. Check out those overlocked edges! So exciting!

Besides bust out my serger, I also went ahead and starting in on my coat. I cut out all the pattern pieces I need. Because I normally sew for NFDC, I have gotten really used to having to trace out my patterns before using them. This allows us to reuse the same patterns as many times as we would like without having to re-buy the patterns every time. Sewing for myself then causes this inner struggle about ever reusing the pattern or if I will make it for someone else in another size, etc, etc. Since this pattern has two long coat options as well as the short one I am doing, I was met with the problem of if I should cut the pattern off where I need it or leave it and mess around when I go to cut the fabric. 

In the end I gave in to convenience and just cut off the pattern pieces, however, I did make sure to number the parts I cut off in the off chance I decide to make the longer coats at another time. I doubt I will as the short coat already will be coming down much lower on me then the illustration says it should. Oh the joy of being short. 

Anyways, I put aside my tracing concern and cut the pattern, ironed the pieces flat and got to the cutting.

Since I do all my sewing at home in my room and the only table I have in there is my desk, which houses my sewing machine, serger, tackle box of thread/scissors/notions/misc tools, my floor in turn becomes my cutting table. It works well enough but the hard wood is not so nice on my knees after a while of cutting. At some point I will have my own cutting table at home as well as at the theatre.

My very high tech cutting table (aka my floor)

One tiny problem arose while I was cutting out the outer fashion fabric. The pattern calls for you to self line the front 2 pieces of the coat and interface them. Well, of course, I didn't buy interfacing when I went fabric shopping for this project, so I don't have any in the right weight lying around my room or enough of it. I could put the project on hold and go buy some but I'm not especially fond of holding on a project once I start it. So I checked the yardage required on the package and realized I have plenty of the broadcloth I bought for lining to take care of the front pieces, as that is part I planned on lining anyways with it. this means I no longer have to worry about having enough fashion fabric for these two pieces or deal with interfacing since broadcloth already has a good weight to it. So crisis averted! Problem solved! I can go on with the rest of this, cutting wise, in peace.

All the fashion fabric cut and on my ironing board
Here's to tomorrow being the day I put some stitches in this bad boy!


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1 comment:

  1. In your test piece, one of those three black hook-shaped marks is CLEARLY more sinister than the other two...

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