learning to work with the new serger

So it’s been a month or so since i got my serg­er. I made a cou­ple of starter projects on it when i first unpacked it but I had oth­er projects (xmas) that need­ed my atten­tion and i did­n’t have a chance to get back to it until last week.

I have a ter­ri­ble time buy­ing pants and leg­gings that fit well. Big butt and big thighs. I’m not pre­pared to tack­le trousers yet but a decent pat­tern for leg­gings would be great. So I bought a sim­ple two-piece pat­tern and some cheap brown velour off of the rem­nants table and set to work.

Mea­sure, cut, pin, set up serger.

That last step did­n’t go well. I could not get a seam to form, threads were break­ing… I think i re-thread­ed the thing 5 times and rest all the ten­sions and over and over. Then it was time to walk away for a while. Returned to the prob­lem, watched care­ful­ly as i wound the hand­wheel through sev­er­al cycles. and then it hap­pened. the thread com­ing from one of the cones hung up in the loop on the “anten­na”. Right where the blue cir­cle is…

a lit­tle think­ing — and voila.

Yup, for­got to put the thread car­ri­er tow­er up. Doh.

And no, there is no way I’m going to show you the results of this sewing exper­i­ment. I added a lit­tle extra mate­r­i­al form the crotch tip to down just below the knees. I now have a very nice pat­tern for leg­gings that don’t wrin­kle up at the crotch and just as soon as I make anoth­er pair I’ll show you pictures.

As for the brown velour. It hard­ly shows the cat hair at all and Nina is very fond of her new “blankie’ in the studio.