McCall's 6518: ruffliciousness in progress

Thanks for your comments on my rolled hem post.    Give it a whirl and don't expect to get it right the first time--give yourself 60 or 90 minutes to play.   I bought my foot off ebay last summer as part of a variety pack of feet.

I finalized the fit of my muslins from last week. I made two muslins, size 12 and size 14, and have settled on a hybrid of the two, more like a "13" in the bodice grading to 14 at the hip. In the 12 I was getting a "ducktail" look in the side view derriere, and this was because I needed more room at the hip.   Grading out to 14 there was the resolution.  Easier fix than I anticipated.

I cut out the exterior of the dress. It has a lot of pieces and I was somehow overwhelmed working in my fashion fabric, which is from Haberman Fabrics in Royal Oak, Michigan, purchased on the way from the airport to the American Sewing Expo last September.

Then I needed to switch my serger threads from brown to black to do some pre-serging of raw edges, especially for the underside of the ruffles.. I always get a little sweaty palmed at the idea of cutting my serger threads and threading from scratch, but I did it!

I had read (somewhere, sorry I don't remember, it might have been from the serger class on PR) that the loopers use more thread than the needles in the serger--here I can see that is true! So when you rethread your machine, put the cones with less thread on the needles and put the cones with more thread on the loopers to "even out" the thread usage a bit.

I rethreaded and yay, it ran a great stitch the FIRST time!! Confidence boosted!

Then it was back to my old machine to do a narrow hem on the ruffles:

Here's the underside:

Tension 6, stitch width a little over 2, stitch length 1.5 (on my old machine)

And from the front:

Before ironing:

After ironing:

You can see the underside of the fabric on the ruffle, so be aware of that if you choose to sew this pattern:


So I've switched up my routine a bit. I've been working on a few home projects in addition to my sewing on the weekends. So the past few weeks I have cooked early in the week instead of on the weekend.  Here's what I made last Monday night (Gwen, it's vegetarian!)

The mishaps I had while cooking this dish (fettucine alfredo with asparagus from "Now Eat This Italian") are blog post worthy, maybe I'll write about it sometime.  It still turned out tasty anyhow.

Be well and good night!