Serger Playtime

I am still working on wrestling this new year into submission. Day-to-day activities are an uphill battle. Stuff continues to malfunction and break. It appears I am going to have to replace my cell phone as apps either won’t load or they shut down unexpectedly. And yesterday, we found out that our girls’ first-grade teacher passed away earlier this week. She was a sweet, kind woman and a beloved member of our community.

I am trying to concentrate on the bright spots. My Bernina serger mastery class on Wednesday was great fun. I had four students and all of them did well. After class, I came home and registered for Sew Expo and was able to get into all the classes I want to take. The competition for classes is so great that prospective students are allowed 20 minutes to register—you need to know ahead of time exactly what classes you want to take on which day—and every time you select a new class, you have to complete a verification screen to prove you aren’t a robot. Tera was able to get her classes, too, so now we are all set for our big adventure.

Joann Fabrics is back to shortened hours, which annoys me to no end. I was in town yesterday morning and planned to stop at Joanns on my way home. I had a shopping list for a few specific items. I arrived shortly after 10 am only to find that, once again, they are not opening until 11 am. (Over the holidays, they opened an hour earlier.) I did not want to sit and wait or find other things to do. Had I known they were going back to pre-holiday hours, I would have picked up what I needed at Hobby Lobby.

I came home and spent the afternoon working on class samples for my serger feet class next week. Class prep takes a fair bit of time, but once it is done, it’s done. This class will cover how to use the gathering foot, the elasticator foot, and the cording/piping feet. The gathering foot samples are done. I’m going to make the elasticator feet samples today. Yesterday was devoted to playing around with the cording foot.

That round opening in the front and a groove underneath ensure that the cord is fed in smoothly and straight.

When I make class samples, I like to have examples of all possible applications, because that helps to spark creativity. Gail Yellen has a video on making wire-edged ribbon, so I followed her tutorial and made one of my own:

I used some strips I had on the cutting table; this would look better with wider strips but it illustrates the technique adequately.

[This is why I keep the equivalent of a Joann Fabrics at my house: Gail recommended 26-gauge wire for making the ribbon, so I went to the craft storage room in the basement and pulled out the jewelry-making supplies. Hey, look at that!—two spools of 26-gauge wire.]

I keep a notebook of serger swatches for each stitch technique and thread combination. Each page has space to write down the machine settings—presser foot, tension, stitch length, differential, etc.—so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time I want to make something. A fabric sample with the stitch gets attached to the page. That book goes to every class with me. My class handouts always include a blank record sheet for students to copy and use to make their own books. Two of the students in Wednesday’s class asked if they could borrow my book for a few days. They planned to begin making their own books during Open Sew at the store yesterday. I am curious to see how far they got.