Hello again

"Hello again. It's been a while..."

Last summer, my Mum bought me an overlocker for my birthday. Whilst I was excited about the potential of all the things I could do with this new toy, it took a month, and a visit from my industry trained sewing Mum, for me to get it out of its box. Buoyed up by some early success, I had every intention of using it as often as I do my regular sewing machine.

New supplies from Singers...

And then, well, the weeks and months went by, and the poor thing was a bit neglected. Largely in part due to the fact I have a strong aversion to instruction manuals. And my new overlocker (or, The Beast, as I have named it), came with a large one. Plus a DVD, to boot. 

...plus scraps leftover from a recent bunting workshop.

So, following the fun of the January challenge I set for myself (to only make things out of stuff already in my sewing box, rather than buying more stuff), I think my next little sewing challenge will be to properly get to know how this machine works. And I don't mean just coasting along, praying the thread doesn't ever break, and relying on the basic functions Mum showed me. Nope. I am going to attempt to do something I normally shy away from at all costs. To take time to read the manual. Gulp.

FORTY FIVE MINUTES of head scratching and reading the manual later,
we have threaded up and fully functioning machine again. Whoop, whoop!

Actually, I am not being entirely truthful here. I had decided to start using my overlocker more - but without the bit about taking the time to read the manual. (This is me, after all - I have been buying the same brand of phone for the last decade, on the grounds it is pretty intuitive to use, and therefore doesn't require me to open the manual.) 

But, my hand has been forced. During a rare child free afternoon (all thanks to school for one, a play date for another, and, well, one upstairs asleep) I decided to leave the housework and have a go with the overlocker. Armed with some new supplies from Singers in town (end of January Rule!), I had high ambitions to polish off a few (!) items of clothing for my eldest, who appears to be growing super fast at the moment. 

And then, after a promising start, a thread snapped. Probably my own fault, too, upon reflection, as I was not quite careful enough about changing the colour of threads over. 

I had a pretty sulky moment, where I thought to myself that the entire thing would just have to go back into the box until Mum came up for a visit. The insides of this machine seemed impossibly complicated to me, and I did not want to waste precious time reading the manual. Or watching the DVD, either, for that matter.

Anyhow, sometime later, the little pink piece of fabric was the end result. I barely had time to bask in my new reading and following instructions skills, as just after that moment, my youngest little girl announced the fact she had woken up from her afternoon sleep. So no showing off finished clothing yet. 

"I'll try and make more effort to get to know you from now on..."

But, I will say it here (as then I might stick to it), that my next challenge is going to be to overcome my sewing rut with the overlocker, and actually practise using it a bit more. And, who knows, maybe even try out some of the more fancy stuff it can do.

Next project will be to hunt down some nice jersey, and have a go at this pattern...

"MUM!"