10 Miles of RUFFLES!

            Ever since my kids left to go back to school and the house was de-decorated, I have been locked up in my sewing room creating! It's getting pretty messy in here, but boy have I been productive. All of us at Sew It Up have been sewing like crazy! Naturally, we are getting a whole bunch of new stuff ready for all of the shows this Spring not to mention the shop. It seems that the more I design, sew and create, the more I want to keep going. I keep thinking that I am almost done for a while and then, pow, more ideas pop into my head - maybe I am afflicted! Perhaps its like an obsessive compulsive thing. Well, even if "I am" or if "it is",  I am having a lot of fun!

The other day I was focusing on making ruffles for a new skirt kits. I had to really psych myself up though because I wanted to hem them all with a rolled hem, BUT I have a new serger that I will have to teach myself to use first. I bought this last Spring, in April. I had trouble with one of my other sergers, so I thought that I could just take this one out of the box and zoom. Ha! I ended up in tears! You do not take a more complicated serger "out of the box" and intuitively know what to do. Sewing may be in my blood, but  . . .  Since then, I have sold my other two sergers so I was forced to learn and use this new one. 

First, I read the book - twice! I got a good night's sleep, woke to a good cup of coffee, dressed (minimally, I was not planning on going anywhere!) and went upstairs to my sewing room. I sat down, opened the book, turned the machine on, and started going through the book page by page making up my own little samples. By lunchtime, I felt like I was ready. I felt pretty good about it. So, I started my fist project. A four tiered ruffled skirt ("Stella" by Lila Tueller) - perfect! I moved on to three more projects - all good. Then, I plunged into making a new Nie Nie skirt by Pink Fig. This is a 6 tiered skirt for little girls and it honestly takes about 10 miles of fabric that you turn into ruffles. I sewed, serged rolled hems, etc. It was fantastic!

BUT, for the next project, my serger started messing up. So, what do you do? You go to the trouble shooting section of your manual and well, nothing fit the description of what my machine was doing ~ or rather failing to do. It did not matter if I wanted to do a flatlock or an overlock stitch, the tension was all off and each time I stopped to look at it, the needle was unthreaded. So, I stopped! I fixed dinner, watched show and then told my husband that I was going to figure this out. Lol - no way. An hour and a half later, no solution! So, what do you do then? Well, my advise to my students is always: stop, go get a good night's sleep. Then, come back and clean and rethread the whole machine -  carefully. Hmm. . . Something was missing . . . 

I talked to several of my sewing friends; no ideas, no answer. So, I called my dealer. Of course, they want me to bring it in to be serviced. Don't they know that will cost me a half of a day! We talked for a little while and suddenly my Bernina "genius" says, "Did you say that you have just made like 10 miles of ruffles?" (I failed to mention all of the other projects that I had completed.) "Yes", I replied. "Have you changed your needle?" she respectfully submitted. BINGO, that was the something missing!

So, I changed the needle and it worked perfectly!!! Such a pity that I am such a dummy and did not think of that! I wasted so much time! I still cannot believe that I did not even think of that. Needles do wear out you know. The tip, but also the eye of the needle loosing its integrity. 

Boy, was that stupid!

Brrr . . . its actually been snowing here in Texas!