My birthday, as you probably won’t recall, falls only a week after the twins’. I’m pretty resigned to it being permanently eclipsed now that they’re around, but this year was a bit of a bigger one: 40.
I could probably muse about what it means to have ended another decade, or the approach of middle age; about body changes and how they interact with fashion trends to affect your style. I could even say something about the fact that this blog was only a few months old when I turned 30.
But instead, I’m going to celebrate my birthday present. After years of wistful wishing, intermittent planning always aborted by some more pressing expense, I walked downstairs yesterday morning to a comically large box on the dining room table.
My husband (abetted by my children, my mother, and at least one sewing friend), had pulled the trigger I have never been able to, and bought me a coverstitch.
And because he’s him, it wasn’t the baseline model I had generally planned on. The Babylock Euphoria has all the bells and whistles, including air jet threading for the looper and a harp space big enough for a quilt, should you decide to coverstitch your quilting.
I can’t even wrap my head around it, to be honest. But it’s there, begging to be used. There’s about a million accessories that I need to buy (all the binding attachments, for a start)… and I’m back at work so my time is even more limited… but it’s here!
For my first project, I picked a design I’ve been musing about for months as a nursing-friendly topper. I used my trusty knit sloper and drafted the crossover and flare right on the fabric.
It’s cute, casual enough to wear working from home but spiffy enough for when I’m in the office, and best of all, it has miles of hem for testing out the coverstitcher.
Because this was self-drafted very much on the fly, there wasn’t really any testing of where the crossover would fall; I kinda feel like an inch or so higher or lower might have been better, but I’m not hating it. My bust point fell abruptly by at least an inch on August 31 last year (the day the twins were born) so my sense of where certain points on the pattern fall is a bit inaccurate these days. At least it still mostly fits.
I’m very happy with the width of the flare and the flutteriness I ended up with though.
I need to slow down and build a bit more precision with the thing, but as time poor as I am right now that’s maybe not going to happen. On the whole, though, it makes the whole hemming process much faster. I haven’t even needed to use a fusible so far.
The weather turned sharply nasty in time for my birthday, and we realized that the twins had outgrown most of their clothes during the last month while they were wearing mostly diapers (with occasional cute dresses). So tonight I spent some time cutting out some little pants and sweaters. Of course the first ones I went to sew up aren’t terribly warm, but those will come, I promise. These are cut from Jalie 2920, the classic leggings pattern, in the smallest size, which is a kids’ size 2. Technically far to big, but smaller than the baby sweatpants pattern I was also testing out so I thought I’d give them a try. This shiny polyester doesn’t have a huge amount of stretch so they actually work as loose-ish pants right now. I don’t think it’ll hold up, but it’s pretty and the fabric was a hand-me-down I’m unlikely to use for anything else. I actually had to turn the tensions (both upper and looper) down fairly dramatically on the coverstitch for this fabric, which was another lesson learned. I’m thinking matching dresses…
And more to come!
Tanit-Isis Sews 