Right now, it’s resting in a pile somewhere around my ironing board sporting a bunch of popped stitches around the waist.
What went wrong?
I suspected from the beginning that a 1.5mm wide x 2.5mm long zigzag stitch was not going to give enough stretch, but that’s what the book said to use, so that’s what I did. I should not have.
Listen to your gut.
Sometimes you do know better than the book.
Remember that knit stitch I mentioned in my last entry that I was trying to learn more about?
Well, I learned that it is exactly what I want to use for this skirt. First, I ran a test seam using a lightning stitch, stretched it, and popped a whole mess of stitches. Then I ran a test seam with this knit stitch, stretched the living daylights out of it, trying to pop some stitches, and I couldn’t. The only thing it did was make my seam all wavy.
Which is easily fixed. Hold your iron over the seam with steam for a second or 2, and kiss the waves goodbye.
Stretch it again, and the waves stay away.
So I’m in the middle of debating what to do about those popped stitches on the skirt. Do I try to salvage, or start over from scratch? The whole thing was too loose and I had to bump some of the seam allowances up to like a whole inch. I might start over with the next size down (assuming I have enough fabric left.) I don’t know. I’m a bit discouraged at the moment so I’ll probably let it be for a day or two.
But hey, I had absolutely no skipped stitches the whole day. Huzzah!
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