Serger! Sewing! Me!

[Optimist]

Hi. I actually was a fairly good seamstress in the past. I got to the point where I could make a pretty good lined suit jacket. Well, it has been a while. I bought a sewing machine a few years back but found that I was totally dissatisfied by the seam finishing, and so I did not get into it. So now I bought a fairly inexpensive, but popular serger in order to make those nice professional finish seams. Also the ability to sew knits. (I believe that the serger is called an "overlock" in Britain, and other places).

Why do I want to sew my own clothes? Well, first of all, I am super tall, (6-1.5 feet) and I hardly ever find clothing that fits. If I do it is 3 or 4 times as expensive as other women's clothing. For example, it might be big enough, but it also does not have the waistline in the right place, or may not have long enough arms. I end up buying plus-sized clothing that are for "overweight" woman and so is much wider in the torso, and has shorter arms and legs than they should have. I always have problems to the "rise" area of trousers.

I have taken trousers and such when I like the fit and have "copied" them to make a pattern rather than working with store-bought patterns. I find this is a better way to duplicate clothing that already fits well instead of taking a risk on patterns that just don't work.

So anyway, I wonder if anyone else is into creating clothing?

[SaraJean]

YES! I love sewing! I started out with minor alterations on my own clothes for the exact opposite reason. I’m 5’2” on a good day... So leaning how to hem pants, shorten sleeves and shirts, and move the shoulders/arm holes just makes clothes fit so much nicer.

Then I have a drawer full of vintage garments from about the 1890’s-1940’s that need some mending and others are too far gone to be taken back to their original state so I get to completely rework them which is also fun. I just pull out my dress form, start pinning and get to work. Some of these I have been trying to use to make patterns from.

I’m very, very into making costumes (product of my environment, lol). There is always a costume party somewhere at any given time of the year and people take costuming very seriously down here. Not a whole lot of pre-fab costumes. I have gotten better at mashing patterns together to make what I want. Eventually I want to figure how to draft my own. I like getting creative with my costumes, but I always get in over my head. So far my favorite costume was a gigantic 18th century gold lamé dress (terrible choice for fabric, nightmare to work but it looked cool) with panniers that I made using irrigation drip tubing

My serger still intimidates me. I absolutely love the finishing work that it does on my garments but it moves so fast! I’m self taught and not exactly confident in my skills so since I can’t rip out a serged seam and start over, that always makes me think really, really hard before I use it

[Optimist]

Originally Posted by SaraJean

Y

My serger still intimidates me. I absolutely love the finishing work that it does on my garments but it moves so fast! I’m self taught and not exactly confident in my skills so since I can’t rip out a serged seam and start over, that always makes me think really, really hard before I use it

They sound like a machine gun!

Love the idea of using vintage fabrics too!

[WaterWitchin]

And now I just realized you're the one who sews. LOL. DollytheHun pointed this thread out to me over the holiday season, as I was doing a lot of sewing for Christmas gifts for my daughter.

I will come back to this, but pretty sure it's a good thing we're several states away, or we'd be dangerous!