Going For Gold — Janet Szabo

I told DD#1 the other day that I am in training to win the gold medal in the introvert Olympics. This situation has been an interesting experiment in finding my baseline for personal interaction with other human beings. I don’t need much. In some ways, it has very much been a relief to shed the expectations—both my own and those of other people—that I come out and participate. I’ll get tired of my own company eventually, I’m sure, but for now, I am good.

[I did figure out how to block people from sending me 20 videos a day on Messenger. I still don’t understand why some people feel the need to do that.]

My biggest enemy right now is not boredom, but analysis paralysis. I looked at my to-do list the other day and couldn’t decide what to do first. Part of the problem is that I’ll decide I want to tackle project X, but the weather doesn’t cooperate, or I don’t have all the supplies I need, or another roadblock presents itself, and then it takes me forever to let go of the idea that I can’t work on project X and have to pick something else. I very much wanted to go out yesterday afternoon and continue garden cleanup, but it was cold and windy and alternating between snow and rain.

I decided to work on my Gap dress knockoff.

I drafted this pattern a couple of months ago by laying the dress out on some pattern paper and tracing around it. The dress consists of a front, a back and two sleeves. The back of the original dress has a seam down the center. I was being lazy yesterday, so I omitted that seam and cut both the front and the back on the fold of the fabric. This is a practice version of my pattern and the fabric is some rayon knit from the clearance rack at Joanns.

The serger was still set up from my last project for a three-thread narrow stitch with wooly nylon in the loopers. I decided to switch back to a four-thread stitch, which meant putting in the second needle and threading it with some regular thread. And then I had to test.

As Zede—of the Sewing Out Loud podcast—likes to say, “There are those who test and those who wish they had.” I have made my peace with testing. It’s faster than screwing up 50 times, and taking out serger seams is a rare form of torture. I spent a good hour running scraps through the serger and fiddling with the settings:

These are not trimmings from the project. These are trimmings from all my testing. (I do have a wastebasket in that room, but I was too lazy to get up and go get it.)

I found a combination of settings that looked good, but then I realized that I should probably use clear elastic to stabilize the shoulder seams of this dress, as in the original. I went stash diving and came up with some 3/8” clear elastic.

I don’t have an “elasticator foot” for my serger, mostly because it’s $35 (for one foot!) and I haven’t yet needed it. The owner’s manual noted that there is a slot in the regular presser foot for elastic. The opening isn’t wide enough for 3/8” elastic, however, so I cut a length of elastic and trimmed it down to 1/4” wide. It fits into the foot like this:

This works, mostly. I may go ahead and shell out the $35 for the elasticator foot. The elasticator foot has a slot in the very tip of the foot that holds the elastic securely in place. The problem with using this foot to apply elastic is that the screw for adjusting the guide sticks up and causes the elastic to flop back and forth over it. It’s tricky enough to serge a slippery rayon knit without also having to worry about the what the elastic is doing. I was able to get the shoulders of the dress seamed reasonably well with the elastic in place, all while reminding myself that this is a prototype . Where better to practice serging with elastic than on a practice dress?

The dress is assembled and currently awaiting a neckline treatment. The original has binding on the neckline. I could do a very similar binding on my knockoff dress because I also have a coverstitch machine. If you thought accessories for the serger were expensive, you should check out the accessories for the coverstitch machine. I’ve already shelled out $30 for the clear foot (which should come standard, in my opinion) and $100 for the hem guide. The binding attachment for the coverstitch machine, which would allow me to make the same neckline binding as on the Gap dress, is $179.

Not this week.

I am going to take the cowl neck pattern piece from the Nancy Raglan and use it on the Gap knockoff dress. I could also do a simple foldover bias neckline, but I really like that cowl. If I end up making myself a whole wardrobe of knit garments, I might buy the binding attachment because it really does make a professional finish.

I’ll get the dress hemmed and the cowl put on and see how I like it. It hangs nicely on my dress form, which is promising. My new supply of elastic for face masks arrived yesterday, however, and I need to get back to making more of those.