Santa's little sewer

Now that Christmas gifts have been delivered I can share a few homemade goodies that were parcelled up this year.

Simplicity 3742 has been SO incredibly useful this year. So far I have used it to make a dress and vintage refashioned top for myself. But I have found it's a great pattern to use for gifts because it's very forgiving - it's a flattering cut and because it's supposed to be billowy, and has the sewn in waist tie and neck sash, you can adjust it to your taste. I made a top for my sister:

I also used the pattern to make a PJ top & pants set I made for my friend Kirsty.

I also made some  matching PJ pants for my friend Ross:

Plus a little something for myself - I finished making some cushion covers to match my Ikea-hack sofa bed cover.

Can you help me? YES YOU CAN! (I hope)

[ Help Me From Myself .. ~, originally uploaded by The Falle'n ™ ~.

Oh, my overlocking woes continue. I don't know what it is, but the heavens seem to be conspiring such that I shall not be overlocking within my own home for all of 2008.

I purchased a Janome Mylock 644D on ebay a few months ago, for almost half what you find it retailing for new. Appeared to be in excellent nick, a gentleman in a very nice well to do Eastern suburb selling it for his elderly mother-in-law who bought it but just hasn't used it much at all. It looks like this one:

Though I used the exact same model at ThreadDen I let the machine sit in my sewing room for a couple of months before touching it. To be honest, I'm a bit afraid of the thing. I have problems occasionally jamming my sewing machine when the thread tension isn't right, let alone a 4 thread overlocker!

First I put off touching it til I could watch the instructional video. But it was a VHS, who has a video player these days?

A month later I got Alex to get it dubbed onto dvd at school. I watched it, it made me laugh because threading the thing just seemed to complicated, no matter how calm the voice over tried to make it sound. I went cross eyed just following where the threads are supposed to go!

Then when I went to plug in the machine would you believe - they gave me the WRONG POWER CORD! I had to contact the ebay seller and cross my fingers and toes that they would still have the right cord and still care to communicate with me how I might get it now that I had already given them all my money. Thank goodness they had it and we did a swap.

Then a fortnight ago I got it home and finally worked myself up into using it to finish off a few items and it was all going wonderfully until all of a sudden, after about 2 minutes use of beautiful overlocking stitches, I realised there was no thread going through the material any longer!

I checked, I tried again - again, the needles were going up and down, the machine remained threaded with plenty of thread, it was not jamming or anything. But no stitches were appearing in the fabric.

Even when I tested just getting a chain before putting the material in, no chains were forming.

I had a look in the instruction manual but they only seem to have troubleshooting hints for SKIPPING stitches. Not 'not making any stitches at all'. Help! Any clues what the problem might be? It was working perfectly and then just stopped. Shall I try rethreading it? (Eeep!)

Damn, I have all these Xmas gifts I want to make, including some baby clothes for some new arrivals in 2008, and I want to use soft t-shirt material but I really need the overlocker for it!

Ah to be shir, to be shir

Thanks to the Craftstylish blog for showing me how easy it is to create elastic shirring and giving me the inspiration for these two vintage refashions this weekend.

Exhibit A:

Once upon a time this was a long sleeved dress. I bought it off ebay because it had a pussy bow neck, and I had just seen The Secretary and I was obsessed with all things pussy bow. But when I got it home I realised it looked a bit more Little House On The Prairie than hot librarian on me. To pull it off I'd have to a lot taller, a lot skinnier and be able to wear HEELS. And I've been looking at it guiltily ever since.

This was a bit of a freeform hack job I have to admit. But, well I figure that can be it's charm. I took my scissors to it and then faked a rolled hem by doing a zigzag stitch about 1/2 stitch length around the raw edge. Did a bit of gathering and made a neck strap.

But it's a breezy loose fitting material and I needed to do something to the back. The material seemed to delicate to put a casing for a thick band elastic like I did for my dress last weekend, so instead I decided to give this shirring stuff a go! Not a bad first effort, me thinks.

Exhibit B:

.

This originally was a long sleeve vintage shirt that I got on sale at Episode for next to nothing. I liked the material though I don't really ever wear shirts. It was much too big anyway. Like I did with my dress last weekend I did some snipping, made a casing on the front and back this time, and used material from the sleeves to make shoulder straps to thread through.

It still looked a bit billowy when I tried it on so I took some more from under the armpits down to the waist and then I did a line of shirring at the waist line. I could have just sewed in some thin elastic I suppose by shirring just seemed easier!

I think shirring could end up being my new favourite cheat's way to gather!