Sitting, Stalling

I am sitting here, stalling, because I am intimidated by the next steps on this project.

See, I thought it’d be nice to offer some tea towels to go with my cookbooks, for people who want to give them as gifts, or just for themselves. And i found some great indie designer patterns on Spoonflower, and ordered the fabric, and yesterday I washed it, and today I ironed it, and the next step is to sew it…

…but the thing is, I was PLANNING to use my new (ish) serger for this. A serger cuts and sews at the same time, making it faster and more efficient. But first I have to re-thread it — it still has the thread on it that it originally came with (four different colors, so you can see what you’re doing when you’re threading for the first time), and I should switch it so it’s all the same color (I’m thinking white, probably, although dark blue would also work with all three of these fabrics, I think.

And there are two options there — I can just take off the old spools, but then I face the complex multi-step process of threading each of the four (all done differently). Which there are many instructions and YouTube videos for, but it’s just going to be easy to mess up at first nonetheless. I can now thread my regular sewing machine practically in my sleep, but it was a bit of a torment learning!

Alternately, I can tie the old spools to the new cones, which I think is what I’m going to do (although the green ran out when I wasn’t noticing, so I’m going to have to thread at least one), and I was thinking that’s such a waste of thread, because I’d have to get scrap fabric and run the serger on it to get to the end of the spools…

…but I JUST realized WHILE WRITING THIS POST, because I am a dummkoff, that I can just cut the threads from the spools and then tie the loose ends to the new cones. Thereby saving whatever fraction of a penny’s worth of thread is on the spools (yes, I know it was sort of silly that I was fretting about that to begin with, but I *hate* waste, I’m a little compulsive about it).

I’m assuming that it’s not going to be a problem tying the thread and running it through, since lots of people recommend that approach, and it’s not going to gum up my machine?

I’m also wondering how I cut/sew a straight line in the right place for these tea towels — would you lay it out first and draw blue pencil lines or chalk lines with your giant quilting ruler? I think if I just try to eyeball it, disaster will ensue. (For normal sewing with a double-folded hem, I’d first cut the tea towels apart, then usually either pin or iron the hem before sewing, so no chance of error there.)

Gah, intimidated. Learning new things is scary. Also exhilarating, so at some point, the desire for the dopamine rush will kick in, hopefully, or at least my irritation with my waffling will kick in, and I’ll just do it.

In the meantime, maybe I’ll add some more jump rings to pendants and watch a little more Grantchester, and oh, my irritation at these men’s handling of their love lives is even more frustrating than my frustration with my serger wibbling — I like this British murder mystery show in a lot of ways, but my GOD, they all make such a mess of things, and I am only willing to cut them so much slack for the socially conservative 1950s time period they’re living in (which is, I think, the showrunner’s point, but still).

I’m just finishing up season 3, and I think there are 8 seasons, so I’m hoping these infuriating men start figuring things out SOMETIME soon, and stop making a hash of the women’s lives around them…

Link to fabrics in comments!