Fabric nemesis

I picked up a lovely silky drapey knit to sew a top for my sister-in-law’s birthday. Great colours, nice pattern, all good. Mystery composition but probably 100% synthetic.

Cut out top. Made modifications to suit her (she’s tall). Gung ho, I started testing on scraps… AND MET MY NEMESIS.

This mofo WILL NOT SEW. Not on my machine, anyway. I’ve tried jersey needles, which were worse than the regular ol’ universals. It slips and slides, it skips stitches, the length is irregular, it won’t sew straight, and sewing through tissue doesn’t help. Oh, and the Singer 201-K and the overlocker hate its guts, too.

While I’m hardly a master of the stretch, I had no idea that this would be so diabolical. Anyone got tips? I’ve sewn wool and cotton jersey with no problems at all, so I’m not a complete knit fabric dunderhead.

The allure of velour

I was obsessed with the idea of a jacket with pockets for jamming my hands into. So I borrowed a handful of Burdas from the local library thinking there’d be something in there with hand-jammable pockets.

I leafed through them over and over again, past the MC Hammer disaster pants and weird sportswear with drawstrings and toggles, and found nothing much of interest. Only a simple jersey top (4/2009 #112) caught my eye. So I made three of them because they take no time at all.

The brown one is velour. It’s virtually impossible to wear it and not gloat to anyone who’ll listen about how fuzzy it is. I feel I’ve reclaimed some childhood… didn’t we all wear stiped velour in the 70s? The green one was a bash at using up the scraps from the Texan Polygamist Nightmare. I still despair at the spider print jersey that should be so good but just looks awful. Not sold on this one. The third is just black and not worth photographing.

So, no jacket, but have you felt how fuzzy my top is?