How to sew jersey on a sewing machine

I have a very old sewing machine. I bought it from an elderly woman for $20 at her garage sale three years ago in Claremont. It’s a New Home 671 (purchased new in 1967, according to the lift-time guarantee certificate taped to the inside of the owner’s manual) and really works like a dream. A somewhat retro-‘60s dream, but still. A little over a year ago I found the cutest jersey dress on clearance at Target (75% off!). Upon examining it, I found that it has a very simple pattern and that it would be relatively easy to create a paper pattern from the dress (without even having to take it apart) and then, in theory, I’d be able to replicate it an infinite number of times, using any combination of colors and tweaking the details to suit my every whim. I made the pattern, bought a number of nice t-shirts from a thrift store, and set to work. I sewed about fifteen stitches…And was immediately thwarted.

Jersey and other stretchy fabrics are, well, stretchy and different from anything I’ve ever sewn before. When I tried to sew a seam, the needle seemed to “bounce” off the fabric every so often, so that I’d be left with seams like below (marked by angry red arrows):

Yuck. I was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to happen. I searched the owner’s manual for guidance. Surely they had stretchy fabrics in the 60s, so there must be instructions on how to sew them. But the owner’s manual assumes that you can read its mind and a lot of details are missing. At a loss, I then bought proper jersey sewing needles, with no change in the resulting sewing. The lady at the fabric store mentioned something about a special paper material I could buy to make it easier to sew the fabric, but I was not about to do that. I abandoned the project.

Fast forward to last weekend. It suddenly dawned on me to look online for answers. SUCCESS! Here are the most helpful tidbits I found (cobbled together from various sources):

-Use a needle labeled "Stretch" (not just "Knits"). You could use a ballpoint style or a semi-ballpoint universal needle. For the delicate knits use needle size 70 (10). For medium thickness use 80 (12). Size 90 (14) needles are good fabric like polar fleece. I bought a pack of five needles that had 2 70s, 2 80s and a 90 for less than $4.

*  Use a narrow zigzag stitch rather than a straight stitch. A zig-zag stitch is perfect for knit fabric, because it stretches with the fabric, and thus is less likely to pucker or cause thread breakage. Choose the narrowest zig-zag stitch that will not pucker or stretch your fabric, since the wider/longer your stitch is, the weaker it will be. Remember that a zig-zag stitch is wider than a straight stitch, and adjust your seam allowance accordingly.

-Use greater pressure (not tension) from the presser foot.
-Don't let pins get under the presser foot at all, and certainly don't assume you can stitch over a pin.
-Stretch the fabric slightly as you stitch.
-Stitch continuously rather than stopping and starting.

** Sew through something that tears away--tissue paper, toilet paper, old newspaper, etc. (watch for ink smears)

* This advice helped a lot, but the thread was still oddly loose in several places (red arrow: bad; orange arrow: making progress???; yellow arrow: hey, i think these tips are starting to work!):

** This little factoid made the sewing perfect (light green arrow: almost there!; happy dark green arrow: success!). I used strips of catalog paper, since it’s nice and thin. I know you probably can't even see it- that's how perfect and tight and tiny it is.

I believe the stage is now set for me to begin successfully sewing my Target-rip-off dress. Yay!

Genius!

This morning I felt a distinct blogging bug coming on. This is a wonderful thing because 1) my blog has been shamefully neglected for several months now, and 2) there are several things I’ve been intending to blog about. SO, I’ve decided to go ahead and seize, er, scratch? this itch to type by writing out all the things I’ve been meaning to blog about…and then divide them up into individual posts and post them over a period of several days. Not a bad idea, right? That way tomorrow, when I most assuredly won’t feel like blogging, I will still have something to add. Something to keep you coming back…

A lot of the things I want to write about are sort-of-tutorials, by which I mean step-by-step walk-throughs of things I’ve been working on that didn’t go as planned and what I had to do to fix it. I’ve been learning a lot about sewing, letterpress printing (hey, you never know when info about this will come in handy), and painting furniture. I also have a couple of projects and books to share about.

I’ve just written five entries (not including this one) in five pages in Word. I need to take a lot of pictures before posting them, but I plan to start with the first tomorrow.

book review

well, i finally finished...er, no that's not completely true. ahem. start over. well, i finally read most of another book on the shelf that i own and have possessed for a number of years but had previously not read at all: conversations with an eagle: the story of a remarkable relationship, by brenda cox. it's a nice looking little book--well-designed inside and out. you can read the blurb about it on the link above (amazon.com). it sounds like a great book: an outdoorsy woman describes in vivid detail her experiences at a wildlife rescue center in british columbia, focusing primarily on an injured eagle that she is drawn to and everyone else is afraid of. then the eagle dies (don't worry, that wasn't a plot spoiler). despite all of these interesting points, the book was BORING. maybe boring isn't the right word...but the problem with the book is that it's driven by rather insignificant little events, but you know that all these things mean SO MUCH to the author. and here's another thing: she LOVES birds (and horses, too)--wakes up crying from a dream she had where the injured birds at the rescue center couldn't ever fly again. and although she tries really hard, i really don't think she manages to successfully imbue ichabod (the eagle) with human traits. there is no conversation in this story. ichabod is a wild animal--a dangerous, injured, poorly-understood wild animal. ok, so i did skip about 30 pages, so maybe i missed it, but there was really very little evidence, to me, that ichabod even liked brenda--barely tolerated, maybe, but brenda gushes about every aspect of her interactions with the bird with vivid details and raw emotions. i'm not trying to be harsh, brenda seems like a great person; i guess i just couldn't relate to her or the things she cares so deeply about.

also, if anyone wants to buy a certain book for a dollar...well, there's no reason for me to keep it.

done!

i finished the beady last night! yaaay! the final 6-10 outer rows were really hard to manage- all the imperfections on earlier rows (teeny, very minor imperfections ;) ) just got magnified as the thing grew. if you look closely (go ahead, it's ok, i don't mind) you can see where i had to add more beads or not add any beads to try to keep everything on the same level. it was difficult and frustrating trying to figure out how to proceed at the end- i couldn't do much more with the pattern at that point because things wouldn't match up perfectly. so i decided to do a single color (the pale silver) in order to even out the flaws and give it a border to stabilize all the movement of color and pattern. and then the green border holds it all together.

the back looks cool, too.

i want to frame it with my other two 7" beaded things. mmm- shiny.

that's all for now!

UGH. it has been a great day!

that's right. on my list of things to do today are about a dozen items that i had been putting off- emails, phone calls, grading assignments...well, here's pretty much the whole thing:

- email: lw, kf, al, jg, dad, rb, b, pr, ep (aside from "dad", which stands for my dad, those are initials); sga blog

- laundry (3 loads!)

- pantry: inventory, email, volunteers

- grade artist lists

- finish grades

- register for jury duty (bleh)- fill out form and call

- call old doctor's office

- call new doctor's office

- work on layout

- email layout

- call about layout

- blog?

- pilates

see how many emails? see how much grading?? ok, so i only have 8 students, and it took a matter of minutes to read and grade their two-page homework assignment, but that hasn't ever stopped me from putting it off! and anyway, see how many phone calls????

WELL. i was slightly dreading today, yesterday, because, like i said, those are almost all things i'd been putting off. and who wants to purposely fill their day with chores they actively avoid? but today i had two things to look forward to: a delicious breakfast of pancakes made by my b (yum!!), and dinner out tonight (also with b). with those two lovely events, i wanted to fill my day with productivity (fueled by whole-wheat sourdough blueberry pancakes), so that i could confidently enjoy yak tonight (we're planning to try out a nepalese restaurant), satisfied with a day's work well done.

by lunchtime (12:30*), i had gleefully gouged in check-marks over the following items:

- email: lw, kf, al, jg, dad, rb, b, pr, ep; sga blog

- laundry

- pantry: inventory, email, volunteers

- grade artist lists

- finish grades

- work on layout

- email layout 

that left:

- register for jury duty (bleh)- fill out form and call

- call old doctor's office

- call new doctor's office

- call about layout

- blog?

- pilates

and now i'm down to:

- blog?

- pilates

which will soon be just:

- pilates

i really enjoy pilates. for a long time i fervently believed that you couldn't get a good workout without doing something highly strenuous and high-impact for a long time. but those kinds of things tend to hurt my knees and i can't afford to buy $80 sneakers every six months. then i discovered pilates on netflix streaming. it's really wonderful- it's relaxing, but i feel like i get a quality workout. and i don't even need shoes.

anyway, i was noticing that, not only was i getting stuff done like crazy today, my attitude was even pretty good. i know this is god working in me- blessing me today. i usually only work cheerfully on things that i like working on, while things that i don't enjoy are 1) avoided, or 2) done with resentment. i've often experienced what i would call god helping me get things done, but this is one of the first times i've (relaxed and) enjoyed the process, hunkering down and simply slogging through. and craziest thing of all- i didn't put anything off today, and now, at just past 3pm, i'm done with all that i needed to do! yay!

i'll let you know how the yak is. :)

*i made a yummy smoothie for with lunch- it was, approximately, 2 carrots, 1/2 cup plain yogurt, 1 cup orange juice, 1/2-2/3 cup frozen blueberries, 1 banana, ~3/4 cup frozen pineapple. there was a lot, but it was good! i may try something similar with coconut milk.

books

Several weeks ago we had some friends over, and one of them, perusing a shelf of books, pulled out my copy of “Sailing Alone Around the Room”, a compilation of poems by Billy Collins, US Poet Laureate 2001-2003. He mentioned a few things about Billy Collins, saying he liked his work and asked what I thought about it. Well, I had to admit that I’d never actually read the book. It’s really quite pathetic- here’s this lovely slim volume of poems given to me by a good friend (Alanna) in high school. I remember trying to be interested in a book of poems, but really I have this innate fear of poetry- so much of it is deceptively simple and innocent on the surface, only to be about dark, evil things- or else it’s just vague and unnecessarily dense and “meta”. I didn’t even give this book a chance. And so for six…seven…eight years it sat on my bookshelf in my room in NY while I finished high school, went off to college, and then came back and then moved again…and then over Christmas I boxed it up and shipped it 3000 miles across the country, where, upon pulling it from the cardboard box, I carefully placed it on a different bookshelf and promptly forgot about it.

And then the brief aforementioned conversation happened, and, assured that Billy Collins’ poetry was quite harmless and pleasantly amusing, I plucked up the courage to read it.

And I loved it! My first read-through was fast. I just went from poem to poem like they were chapters in a book, not really pausing at all to enjoy them as separate entities. It was like, once I started reading them, I realized I had been starved for poetry and just had to keep gulping them down whole, as fast as possible, whenever I had a spare moment. Here are links to two of my favorites: “Another reason why I don’t keep a gun in the house”, and “Directions”.

This whole episode reminded me of a half-hearted new year’s resolution I made back in January. The Billy Collins book is not the only book of mine on our bookshelves that I haven’t read, though by this point most, if not all, have travelled hundreds, if not thousands, of miles with me. It seemed like a cool project to take this year and read through all these books, including “The Singer Trilogy”, “Conversations with an Eagle”, “Renoir, My Father”, “Les Fleurs du Mal”, and many art books (looking at the pictures dozens of times doesn’t count). It seems a bit late to get started on a new year’s resolution, but maybe I’ll still give it a shot!

Well, that’s all I wanted to say, so…toodles :)

various. sundry.

1) garden: growing! things are actually continuing to grow in the pots (with the notable exception of the thai basil- there in the back- we bought a month or so ago at whole foods...i have half a mind to haul that empty pot over to whole foods and demand a refund for the faulty seeds they sold me. jerks.). b and i are planning to divide the tomatoes today, which may end up killing the bigger ones, but they're supposed to be planted at least a couple feet apart, so they'll die anyway if we leave them together.

2) aaron bros. was having a sale on frames last week, and i found a great one for this beautiful photograph- taken by none other than the lovely photographer of nature-y things, ms. alida oegema. she took this stunning photo at glacier national park; i love having a big "window" into the great green wilderness of the north here in socal. it's good to have a reminder that such places exist.

3) sitting there below the picture is a wonderful little artwork by cathy reichel-clark, a local artist we met a week and a half ago at a little art show called "art on palm" in altadena. b and i hemmed and hawed over her work for a loooong time, and talked to cathy quite a bit in the process. her work mostly consists of hand-built ceramic vases. she can't use a wheel because of (i think) some sort of neurological disease that causes numbness in her hands (and feet), and generally leaves her exhausted. her work is exquisite- it's very different from most ceramics works because of the fact that it's not thrown, and until i saw her work i would have thought this would make her work inferior. but she's very talented and creates work that brings out the best in hand-built ceramics. it's so elegant and interesting (i wish i had thought to take pictures!...if she would have let me- she doesn't have a website..and i can't find any pictures online), and her glaze work is really amazing- b and i really like this black and white design, but she also had pieces that were very "rustic" looking, some that were modern-arty...a really wide range of decoration techniques that was all very, very beautiful. well, we didn't buy anything at that fair, but thought about it and then went to the sierra madre art festival last weekend, where she had a booth, and there we decided to take this piece home with us. yaaay! :) 

4) this mysterious black binder contains the first hard-copy version of a project i've been working on with scripps professor roswitha burwick (and others). i'll have more to post about this at the end of the month. :D