My birthday was last week and my parents got me a serger! (A Brother 1034D, to be specific, which comes highly recommended at the lower end of the serger price range.) It's a fancy type of sewing machine that cuts, sews, and finishes edges, all in one step, so it can really make sewing a lot faster!
The timing could not have been better, as I need to make a bunch of inserts for Noob's Best Bottoms shells in preparation for an upcoming trip, and inserts are way faster to sew with a serger. As it turns out, inserts are also a perfect first serging project. They sew up quickly, so if you totally mess up, it's not like you've wasted a ton of time. You don't have to be super-precise about sewing the exact right shape; you just have to get in the ballpark. And since the Best Bottoms inserts have contoured edges, rather than being perfectly straight, it gave me some excellent practice sewing some (very gentle) curves, which is definitely tricky on a serger.
Bonus: They actually turned out usable. Here is the first batch I made.
They are five layers of flannel, which is not a whole lot. But I got this flannel for cheap, and it was great practice. Here is one of the inserts inside a Best Bottoms shell. I love how trim this system is. If you haven't seen it before, definitely check out this page, which explains what it's all about. It's pretty clever, easy to use and very economical.
Then I moved on to using old t-shirts. Even cheaper! And I took pictures.
First, I folded the shirt into fourths. This gave me a total of eight layers:
I laid an insert on the t-shirt, making sure that it wasn't covering the shoulder or neck seams. Then I traced it, using a disappearing ink marker so that I wouldn't ruin the original insert:
When I was done tracing, I pushed down on the snaps on the insert. This left little indentations on the shirt, so I would know where to add snaps:
I cut around the inset. This doesn't have to be precise, because as you'll see, the serger will take care of any excess. You can also see here that I've circled where the snaps need to go:
I added the snaps, through the bottom two layers of the insert. I wanted to make this one into an "overnight" insert, which has snaps on the bottom (to snap into the shell) and on the top (to snap in a regular insert, giving double absorbency). So I flipped all the layers over and circled where the other snaps are:
Then I added the snaps. I did sockets on one side (to allow the regular insert, which has studs, to snap in) and studs on the other side (to snap into the shell). Here are my layers with the snaps added... ready to serge!
All done serging! Ready to use! You can see that the serger cut off all the excess fabric -- so easy! This took all of about 15 minutes from start to finish, including taking pictures :)
Here's how it looks with the shell. Overnight insert (with snaps on both sides) on the bottom, regular insert on top. I made the regular insert out of a t-shirt as well and accidentally left a layer with some writing on it on top... oops! Still works fine, just looks funny :)
Here's how it looks on! Still pretty trim considering this is a full 12 layers of fabric.
I love my new toy :) Hopefully by the time I'm done sewing all the inserts I need, I'll feel confident to try it out on some "real" projects!
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