Someone Should Take Away My Sewing Machine

Take them away.  Take my serger and my regular machine.  Put them very high up, out of my reach.  My sewing techniques are a disgrace to the world that is home sewists.

Since it's April vacation for me, I knew I'd want to sew, so I bought some fabric from www.imaginegnats.com  She has some great knit fabric and a fabulous double gauze that I thought would be perfect for this imaginary top that I'm trying to perfect.

I should have known I shouldn't sew this week, when the package arrived and I hadn't ordered anywhere near enough of the double gauze for my great plans.

The knits seemed ample enough and I was really excited to make a few Union St. Tees for myself in various sleeve lengths.  My favorite color was a toss up between the peat and the light pink.

I went with the peat first and planned to make a long sleeved shirt but didn't have enough fabric, so I went with elbow length.  In a medium.  And then had a terrible time with the tension on my serger and ended up with the most ridiculous wavy neckband.

I took out the neckband 3 times and redid it and each time, it just wasn't right.  I even topstitched it one of the times, sure that it would work itself out.

Have you ever taken out a serged seam?  If that doesn't put you right in the looney bin, then you are one tenacious beast.

I did it THREE times.
 
Then I decided that the whole shirt was just too big and cut it apart to cut it back to a small.

Along the way, one of my serger threads started to misbehave and because sergers were invented by the devil himself, it took me longer to straighten out that mess than it would have to make a shirt for each of you reading this.  Sergers need to be threaded in a particular order and even when you pretend you did it in the right order, because what difference does it make, you have to take it out and do it again the RIGHT WAY or you won't have anything.

I got that straight and then, just as the whole thing was coming together swimmingly, I RAN OUT OF THREAD in one of the most crucial of the 4 spools.

I almost cried because that is the one that MUST be threaded first, so I had to take all of them out again and rethread the entire machine.  Again.

Since I had already hemmed it and everything because I thought I had the neckband under control in the medium, I didn't bother to undo it and figured I'd just sew the side seams differently from how the directions said to.   As in, not do the hem after.

And everything went as I was hoping it would.  Until I realized I had done this.

FRONT:  nice double needle topstitching.

BACK:  serged edge because it's supposed to be INSIDE and then there's the stitching on the back of the double needle topstitching which is now on this inside of this shirt.

It's the back, so I really don't care.  If anyone is close enough to see the front and back and actually notice a difference, then they deserve a prize.

After all the shenanigans, this shirt is actually the exact fit that I was looking for.  And I'll never achieve this perfection again because I couldn't possibly recreate the disaster it took to get here

I really love the color and the fabric is amazing.  It's a little heavier than a typical cotton, so this wide hem makes it feel very casual and almost like a sweatshirt, but not quite.

Oh, and that neckline?

Much better the fourth time around.  Or was it the 5th?

Linking here:
http://www.skiptomylou.org/made-by-you-monday-285/
http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2016/03/blog-hop-183-featuring-koop-clean.html
http://www.sewcando.com/http://www.sewcando.com/
http://olives-n-okra.com/funtastic-friday-71/
http://www.thesitsgirls.com
http://www.myturnforus.com/2016/04/freedom-fridays-with-all-my-bloggy_21.html
http://www.pluckys-secondthought.com/cooking-crafting-j-j-link-47-features/ 
http://olives-n-okra.com/merry-monday-101/
http://www.flamingotoes.com/2016/04/show-tell-link-party-51-8/
http://www.thetipgarden.com/2016/05/country-fair-bog-party-may-16.html