Serger Project 1

E-Reader
Click for free Bernina pattern by Kellie Rushing 

Okay, I admit it.  I REALLY don’t like sergers.  I use them as little as possible in my sewing classes, but I know I need to use them more.  So I signed up for serger club at Studio Stitch.  They MIGHT change my mind, but the jury is still out.


I would much rather do clothing construction start to finish BY HAND as opposed to using a serger for any of the steps.  I think this stems back to my early childhood.  Mother made my clothes and did a fantastic job.  Sergers were not so readily available  for the home sewist fifty years ago, so if a classmate had something on with a serged finished, it was obviously store bought and made with far less love than what my mother made for me.  I used to feel sorry for the girls who had to wear store bought clothes, and a serged seam was a dead give away.

Flea Market Serger Find

However, home sewing has come a long way and many of us now have sergers.  I have two...they just stay in the closet.  (How did you like that explanation about why I don’t use a serger very often?  I’m sure you would never think that the real reason is that I don’t have the patience to put four or five different threads through 5,699 different holes, thread guides, and tension discs! In my high school class, if a student unthreads a serger, they have to put a dollar in the serger jar.  Anyone who threads a serger gets a dollar!  Ninth graders will do anything for a dollar around lunch time!)  

Let’s go back to today’s story.  A friend was able to stay with my husband so I could run out for a quick class at Studio Stitch.  It was so good to get a couple of hours away after the hub's recent ER visit.  In class we were making a cover for our e-Readers from a Bernina pattern by Kellie Rushing.   It took me awhile to get the threading right on my “borrowed” serger.  (We are buying a Bernina serger for my school classroom so Studio Stitch let me use one today to get accustomed to it!)  Justiann finally convinced me to do EXACTLY the same thing with the serger that I tell my students to do with the conventional machine  when there’s a problem. I needed to unthread it totally and rethread it from scratch.  It’s just a little more complicated to do that with a serger, so I tried to avoid doing it.  However, a couple of re-threadings later it was working great.

(It turns out that my left-handed nature gets me even when threading sergers.  I try to thread left to right through thread guides when they want right to left, and vice versa.)  

After all the time threading and re-threading, the actual e-Reader case only took about 20 minutes to finish.  It was super-easy, after I sorted through my left-handed spatial challenges (Definitions for the words “width” and “length” were a little challenging today!)   I’m now on the search for any of my friends who have e-Readers!  Guess what they are going to get for Christmas!  My sample leaves a lot to be desired, but now that I’ve conquered the basic concept I’m thinking of doing some embroidery on them and turning them out one weekend for gifts.  It will be a good way to use from my fabric stash, practice serging skills, and give a gift all at once. If I become familiar enough with the pattern, it can go into the supplemental projects that my first year students are allowed to do if they finish assigned projects in class.
Here’s the funny thing.  After the class I came home and got the old Elna serger out of the cupboard and actually threaded it and began serging a bit. It took two hours to get it up and running, using a manual that I had located on the Internet. (This serger was a $5.00 flea market find, no manual included.)  You might notice in the picture that each cone has a different color thread, just like the manual said to do to check the tensions on the stitch. That Justiann at Studio Stitch may just make me move out of my comfort zone.    I guess I just needed a push.  I’m looking forward to next month’s serger club!