I Made A Serger Cover

    I needed a nice cloth cover for my serger. The serger came with one of those plastic covers but I don't like plastic on plastic.  I wanted to have something so I wouldn't have to unthread the machine or take off the overhead thread guide.  So I designed my own take on a very simple serger cover.

   The front

The back

     I sewed this up in about 3 hours.  It was easy to make and I loved that I got just exactly what I needed.  Here's how I did it.  I took a rectangle of fabric about 20" x WOF and hemmed up the two long sides and one short side.  The unhemmed short side would be the back.  I cut a slit up the back for the thread guide rod to slide in.   I hemmed up the slit to the curved U part at the top and covered that portion with binding, it's not pretty, but it works.  I fit the cover on the machine and hemmed the last side so it wasn't too long.  Then I made six ties (they took the longest to make because I only cut the fabric 1 1/4" wide and they were fiddly to get folded and sewn up, but they look great because they are so thin).  The ties are a little two long, but I didn't want to take the time to make the perfect length so I left them at WOF and just cut the selvedges off.  The sides and the back are secured with the ties.  I love the cover.  It's pretty and functional.

Call Her By Her Name

    I decided on the perfect name for my Singer Serger a few weeks ago.  She is now known as Dolly.  I love musicals and "Hello Dolly" is one of my favorites.  This machine is just as sassy and lovable as the main character in that movie.  I have had a couple of problems with threading her but it was all operator error.  Once I figured out exactly how to thread her correctly, it was all good and she works great.   I have a light grey thread running through her right now and it works for everything I'm doing at the moment.

    I spent the last couple of days putting a three thread rolled hem on the scarves I made a few weeks ago.  Originally I put a narrow rolled hem on them with my sewing machine (without a rolled hem foot because I like to live dangerously) but I wasn't happy with the finished product, it wasn't very neat and it needed to be fixed.  So I fixed them.

     See my lovely scarves now.  In the first picture you can see the beautiful three thread rolled hem I did on Dolly.

My First Successful Serger Project

    I made my first headbands.  I bought a yard of pretty floral knit jersey (along with several other knit jersey prints) from Fabric.com.  I made three headbands and I have enough fabric left over to make a couple of scarves with this material, which I'm going to make up after I finish making my headbands up.  I used the Crafty Gemini video tutorial make up these headbands or turbands as she calls them.  The tutorial is here.

I Changed My Mind

    I have a love/hate relationship with sergers.  I bought a Juki serger about three years ago that worked well for about a year and then the tension went wonky and I couldn't fix it.  I took that machine to Goodwill about a year ago and I thought I would be through with sergers forever.

     I really love what you can do with sergers, rolled hems, seam finishing, etc., so every once in a while I try to work out a way to own one without spending a boatload of money.  I wish I could afford a machine with air threading and all the fancy stitches, but that's not happening now.  So I spent the last weekend trying to find a machine I could afford and I settled on the Singer14T968DC, Professional 5, five thread serger that comes with 7 presser feet. I bought it from Allbrands.com.  I have made four purchases from Allbrands.com and I have been happy with all four purchases.

    I received the machine on Thursday (it was ordered on the previous Saturday) and took it out of the box.  I also downloaded the owner's manual/workbook from the Singer website and that is on my computer now.

    Here she is: 

   In the bottom picture the machine is threaded for 3 thread overlock stitching.  You can do a variety of stitching  styles with this machine.  It took me a little while to thread the machine last night, but threading this machine was a little more involved than it was on the Juki.  This machine has a few more levers and and knobs to adjust when you are threading for a certain type of stitching.  It's all laid out in the workbook, which is really handy. The 3 thread overlock stitching is actually working and I'm getting ready to make some headbands with some lovely knit jersey I bought.   I'll be sharing those when I finish them.

    I started another knitting project.  I watch several knitting podcasts on Youtube and several knitters are making trying to knit one or two dishcloths each week this year so they can use them for Christmas gift giving.  I love this idea, but I'm not going to make so many.  I'm just going to make as many dishcloths as I can from the four balls of KnitPicks Dishie yarn that I have in the Jalapeno colorway.  I bought this yarn last year to crochet dishcloths, I really like the knitted dishcloths but they take so much longer than crochet, but if I give myself a year, I should be able to get this yarn knitted up.  I'm using a size 8, 24" Bamboo ChiaoGoo circular needles to make Grandmother's Favorite Dishcloth.  I found this super easy dishcloth pattern on Ravelry years ago, but if you're not a member of Ravelry, you can find the pattern here. 

    Here's my first dishcloth in the works: