More serger experiments, more questions. So I cut up some of the Castles fabric into 5″x5″ squares to make cocktail napkins, and then I doubled them up (wrong sides together) and started serging. All was going well, until I suddenly ran out of the green thread! Oops — I guess they don’t really give you that much to practice with.
So that’s fine, but I did 3.5 out 7 napkins, and I’d like to do at least 4, so I have a little set I can sell. They’re so adorable! Questions:
a) I have green thread that coordinates, but I gather I’m supposed to use special serger thread? Is the difference important enough that I shouldn’t just use my green to finish these off, given that I wasn’t planning to buy green serger thread anytime soon?
b) The green thread is on the third spool, which is one of the loopers, I think, and there’s a specific order to threading these spools, and I’m pretty sure the green thread one is the first one. Does that mean I should un-thread all the others, replace the green, and then re-thread the whole machine? I suppose it’d be good practice in threading for me….
(Still having fun — all of this took maybe 30 minutes, cutting the squares and sewing 3 out of 4 of the napkins. SO FAST. I am a sewing MACHINE. Well, I’m using a sewing machine, or rather, a serger, which is a machine for sewing, but not what we usually mean when we say sewing machine, but maybe when I’m the one using the machine and I can work as fast as a machine, then I become the machine, and I feel like there’s got to be a sci-fi story in here somewhere — oh, maybe I’ll just go re-read Ursula Pflug‘s lovely “Sewing Forgetfulness” instead…oh, dammit, it was published at Clean Sheets, and the archive is gone, that makes me so mad, gah, I should go take out my frustration on some sewing because poking needles into fabric very fast is a good way of getting out frustration — ahough that said, it’s also a recipe for messing up, because sewing well goes better with a quiet head and calm spirit, so maybe I should just have some tea instead….)
(Ursula, is that story available anywhere else?)
