Well, not really, but today I do. Because I DESTROYED my vintage shirt today, and it took me the last 4 hours to find a way to sort of fix it. Or at least fix it to a point that it is semi-wearable.
As a preface to this, I am a serger newbie. My husband bought me a little Brother 1034d a couple of months ago, and I am still learning how to use it correctly. That thing just goes so darn fast!!
Anyway, I was serging the inside seams on the blouse (being lazy, I should have used french seams, so I learned my lesson there I guess) and managed to get the back of the shirt puckered up under the serged seam, and into the knife. I made a huge gash in the back of the shirt! Oh, did I say some words.
But there was no way I was going to give up the ghost! I had already fit the pattern, I didn't have enough fabric to cut a new back, what could I do?
I thought about it for a while, decided that I would patch the hole with some black interfacing, and then make a yoke for the shirt. I had some black fusible interfacing, which I fused to both the inside and outside to close the hole:
Then I took the last bit of fabric that I had and started drawing lines on it with chalk, the same distance apart as the pattern that was used for the front yoke:
I then pleated it the same way that I did the front, and cut it using the top of the back pattern:
I brought the bottom to a point to make the shirt kind of "western." When I first purchased the pattern, I had assumed at first glance that it was a western-style shirt, so I figured it was ok:
I then folded up a hem in the bottom and pinned it to the back of the shirt:
I sewed the bottom seam, topstitching right along the edge. It worked fairly well, in this photo I am pointing to the patch, which isn't visible:
I then basted along the top edge and trimmed away the excess. I opened the shoulder seams up and the seam at the back of the neck, tucked the yoke into the seam, and re-sewed:
Here is the finished back, ready to be pressed and for the sleeves to be set:
I will wait to do that until tomorrow, since I clearly have a case of the "poo-touch" and am destroying everything I handle. Hopefully a good night's sleep will cure that, as well as make me feel less like throwing the shirt AND the serger out the window.
12 comments:
Wow, great save! No, please don't throw the machine out the window, you may hurt a poor innocent soul who was minding their own business! Hey, it's happened to me (about a million times) so don't beat yourself up too badly. Live and learn, and call it a "happy accident" because that back yoke really gives the blouse a more professional back view!
Same thing happened to me eons ago. Don't worry...it won't happen again because whenever you use the serger now, being careful will always be in the back of your mind! I'm speaking from experience.
I've done that too. Good save. You'd think that the yoke was intentional.
I have often wished that life had an "undo" button, just like on the computer!
Nice workaround to fix your shirt. In the end, your mistake turned into a lovely design feature!
It looks great! Awesome save!
Genius solution! That shirt is looking like it's going to be lovely.
We've all made mistakes, some can be saved. This was one of the better saves I've seen. Great job.
Fantastic save!!! I don't know if I would have thought of that right away, and like Shannon said, you've definitely added a new design element to the blouse.
I'm new to serging also and did that about a month ago sewing a dress. Thank goodness it was on one piece of the yoke of the dress and I had enough fabric to cut the one piece over.
The good thing is that usually only has to happen once. I think everyone who is new to serging has this accident, I know I did. This is a great example of lemons to lemonade the shirt looks great.
Fantastic save! I love the yoke! You know what "they" say--mistakes bring about design options!
Yes it can be terrifying how fast sergers seem to go. By the way, where does one find black (or any color besides white) interfacing?
Thanks for all the comments, everyone! And Sabayon, you asked where to get black interfacing. I bought the interfacing that I used at Hancock's, but you can get wonderful interfacings, including black, here: http://www.sewexciting.blogspot.com/. It may seem pricey, but if you look at the dimensions, they are quite wide.
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