I've been working on The Monks halloween outfit. The pants are just about done (needed a waist elastic adjustment and a length check and now recheck) but they came out quite nice - little black thinwale corderoy with pumpkin cuffs. I decided to be brave and use the serger for these and man... I LIKE my serger now. Its fast, and i don't have to iron or trim or any of those tedious things. Speedy is good. However, when I screw up and sew the cuff on the wrong end....well...then serging is very bad, but I still enjoyed the serger much more than before.
The other piece I am working on is a fleece vest. Fabric is adorable - ghosts and candy corn. Its almost done -just need to put in the zipper (EEK) and finish the edge of the hood. I did not serge this - although I should have - I was nervous because I wasnt' familiar with how a vest went together and I worried about having to pick seams on fleece. hard!! I will say that the bias taped sleeves look so nice!! I wasn't sure exactly how they would come out but I'm please with how finished they look.
The zipper is giving me ajita. The first time I wanted to learn to sew (about 8 years ago) I started with fleece hats - and did ok. then I decided to try a baby footed one piece thing with a zipper....well that was a disaster - I never even got the zipper pinned and I just never sewed again until I started appliqueing recently. Very quitterish of me.
So, zippers and I have a bad history.
Please give me your best zipper advice . I'd hate to ruin the vest at this late date.
And oh yeh - I learned that good shears are the most important tool i have. By far. Next time someone asks what they should do to get started the first thing I am going to say is buy a decent pair of good shears. How I could be dumb enough to have a really nice sewing machine and really crappy scissors i have no idea but actually being able to cut through the two layers of fabric cleanly makes sewing so much easier!!