The Hollyburn is finally complete!

The construction of this skirt went so smoothly, too. The zipper is straight and neatly concealed, the pockets lay flat, the waistband fit perfectly the first time. I was on a roll!

Until The Final Hem.

A blind hem looks so professional and my serger has a blind hem option. It was time to take my sewing to the next level. Easy peasy.

The first round was a fail, but that’s normal for beginners, right? I tried again. And again.

My optimism wavered. At one point I googled “blind hem serger frustration,” not because I was looking for solutions, but because I needed to know that I wasn’t alone.

Eventually I gave up on perfection and decided to settle.

 

 

But lying in bed that night I couldn’t let it go. The rest of the skirt turned out so well but the hem gave the whole thing an amateur feel. I slept on it and by morning I had decided to redo the hem.

Anyone who has used a serger knows what kind of commitment I’m talking about. That’s a loooong hemline and a lot of stitches to pull out. Yet it needed to be done.

It took me the better part of an hour (with reading breaks) to pull it all out. The fabric was a little worse for wear — a few snags and one teeny tiny hole from the stitch ripper — and this is what the floor looked like when I was done:

 

 

I serged the raw edge and used my old Singer to do a new blind hem. (Until I started googling my frustrations I didn’t even realize my regular machine could do one. I had never looked up the meaning of all those strange stitch types in the manual. Which has me wondering, What other superhero abilities does my old workhorse have?)

It’s still not perfect but it is so much better.

 

 

Isn’t she cute?

 

 

Martina wore this to church this morning. In fact, everything she’s wearing except for the shoes is made by me. I can’t tell you how much this pleases me.

 

Cost of this Thing: €16.80 (12.80 for the pattern, 3 for the fabric, 1 for zipper and thread)
Cost of all Things to date: €194.62 (gulp)