Here it is, kindly designed for me by Neil, the first of two get out of jail free cards. I of course, am continuing to work on the piece of art I started four weeks ago. I will openly admit that I am now dragging my feet on it. I sort of resent it for sucking my social life down the drain. Not even sort of – I just straight up do resent it. Because I didn’t want to finish it, I decided to replace a pair of Pajama pants that are totally old and falling apart.
I made myself this awesome freezer paper pattern from the pants themselves. For your sanity’s sake, I am not including a photograph of the original pants. Trust me – they’re covered in paint and holes, and you don’t want to see them. Just know that the pattern is really pretty true to the originals, and I am surprised at how good it is.
I don’t have a serger, or any kind of fancy shmancy machine to sew knits, so I used this tutorial I found online for sewing knit fabrics with a conventional machine, and chose to use the double needle method. I worked super-terrifically until I got to the waistband of the pants, at which point my machine started only catching on every fifth stitch. I chose to ignore that, since the seam it sewed like that on was not structurally necessary.
I get to the last seams on Sunday afternoon – all I needed to do was hem the dumb things. The sewing machine started catching every tenth stitch. I try sewing conventional woven thread? Works like a dream. Obviously I am doing something wrong with the knit fabric. I went to go online to troubleshoot my problem, and I had no internet. Did I mention that I don’t know why I’m paying Sprint for data? My phone has no data connectivity either.
And so – after much swearing and gnashing of teeth, I threw in the towel. More next week.
SEWING MACHINE UPDATE: Yesterday I went to sew a birthday present for Neil’s goodly wife, Maureen, and discovered that my machine only sews one layer of fabric like a dream, rendering it completely useless as a sewing machine. Takeaway? I need a new shuttle for that machine. Also, in hindsight, I could have just switched machines. It’s not like I don’t have four other waiting in the wings. In my own defense, however, I didn’t think it was the machine, just that I was humanly incapable of sewing knit fabrics together.