Hooray for Sergers

I am pumped! I bought myself a Juno by Janome serger at Hancock's when it was on sale a couple of weeks ago. Plus my 10% teacher's discount, that equals I got me a serger. I set up a serger class with Jenny. For $60 I got to go to her house, and spend a couple of hours with her. She gave me fabric and a binder to tape all my samples into. Little did I know it would become my Bible today! If you buy a serger, get a class with Jenny to go with it. Because today was still tough.

Remember this project? I was afraid of the flounce and all that tiny hemming, oh and the chiffon. I had convinced myself it could only be finished with a serger. Well, I didn't have any excuses anymore.

Oh, there were tears.

And cussing.

And taking a break to take the dog to get a Pawdicure to get out of the house.

And more cussing.

And maybe a few Flip Videos narrated by a hysterical me that were about to be sent to Jenny  showing the serger and asking, "Why? What did I do to deserve this? Come home from vacation, please!"

You get my drift.

Then the seas parted, and the machine began to honor me as its new master. Yeah, the tension is still a bit loopy, but it began to sew, so I made it work. Oh, and Jenny will never have to get the crazy-person e-mails. Double score!

Check me out...

The pattern was Vogue 2850. It is an Anna Sui design. I liked that it didn't have any buttons or zippers, but was a true wrap design. I bought the Robert Kaufman chiffon from Fabric.com. They are out of my exact color, but have a couple similar colors.The chiffon was not too bad, thanks to the help of a few tips and a couple friends.

Turtle friends that is. I read that it was better to use pattern weights. Seeing as I didn't have any, and I'm too cheap to buy any, I improvised a bit. It worked for me!

I also used my awesome rolled hem feature on my new serger to use a contrasting black hem on the tie, flounce, sleeves and bottom of the shirt. That made the shirt much easier to deal with in my opinion.

This shirt is basically a sleeveless shirt, I skipped the facing and just rolled hemmed the sleeve openings, with a flounce that covers your shoulders and back.

Here is a shot of the back. It's not as exciting as the front, but you can see a bit how it is put together.

I honestly did not look at the pattern directions very much, as this shirt was pretty self explanatory. I did not use the sleeve or neck facings. I also lengthened it two inches, as that was recommended by several people on PatternReview.com. My bottom bit was much longer than the shirt top part, so I wound up chopping a bit off both of the ends. It didn't seem to effect the fit at all.

I then wore it to dinner with my friend Angie, who knew I would be wearing something I made and assumed it was my shorts. That says a lot for the shirt when a fellow seamster doesn't recognize it as a home made shirt.

Hooray for chiffon! Hooray for sergers! Hooray for the return of Project runway Thursday on Lifetime!

Life is good.

Update: That chiffon maxi from Secret Diary of a Call Girl is season four, episode 5 and 6. It is the last few minutes of 5 and first few of 6. It's not really a maxi, and it looks pretty doable.