fruit salad
I love to sew. I really do. It's a fabulous creative outlet for me. Plus, I get stuff I can wear! And I can make things for others! However, I really hate cutting out all the pieces necessary for a project. It is the most tedious part of the whole process for me (that and hand-hemming full skirts). Unfortunately, it comes right near the beggining! First, I generally do a mock-up to make sure everything fits right and to find if anything needs taking in or letting out. Then I make those alterations to the pattern and depending on how drastic they were, make another mock-up to make sure it all looks good and the way I think it should. Then I finally get around to cutting out the actual fabric. On the mock-ups, I take shortcuts and do things quickly to get a "shell" to make the alterations. On the actual garment, things move much more slowly because I need to ensure everything is lined up properly and I baste before I sew, notch, clip, and all those little things that make a garment look good and sit right and that you never see on the inside. But I don't mind all of these because the end result is noticeably better than without the attention to detail. But cutting? Cutting is just tedious. It needs to be done carefully otherwise things won't turn out right, but it takes so much *time*.
In other news, I bought a serger, the Baby Lock Evolve, just before the wedding: the culmination of my therapy shopping. It's another all-singing-all-dancing machine that makes that funky stitch that hems t-shirts and seams them with all the overcast threads. It's awesome. It also means that I can serge the edges of fabrics that fray badly (read: silk and velvet) immediately after cutting them out so that they won't fray! It's such a fabulous concept! It also means I'll be able to shortcut some things like seaming in skirts and won't end up with unfinished edges. Almost everything I've made thus far has unfinished edges because I had no easy way to finish them. For those who want the stats on this crazy almost-industrial machine: up to 8 threads at a time, up to 1500 stitches per minute, threads itself for the complicated bits, has a cover stitch, and does lots of other fancy stuff I don't know. I'll be taking a couple of classes on how to use the machine in november, and they will be much needed! Oh, and it trims the fabric as you go, so you don't need to do so afterwards.
In other news, I bought a serger, the Baby Lock Evolve, just before the wedding: the culmination of my therapy shopping. It's another all-singing-all-dancing machine that makes that funky stitch that hems t-shirts and seams them with all the overcast threads. It's awesome. It also means that I can serge the edges of fabrics that fray badly (read: silk and velvet) immediately after cutting them out so that they won't fray! It's such a fabulous concept! It also means I'll be able to shortcut some things like seaming in skirts and won't end up with unfinished edges. Almost everything I've made thus far has unfinished edges because I had no easy way to finish them. For those who want the stats on this crazy almost-industrial machine: up to 8 threads at a time, up to 1500 stitches per minute, threads itself for the complicated bits, has a cover stitch, and does lots of other fancy stuff I don't know. I'll be taking a couple of classes on how to use the machine in november, and they will be much needed! Oh, and it trims the fabric as you go, so you don't need to do so afterwards.