Ready Set Serge Pillowcases, Day 7

Somehow I managed to make two extra pillowcases.  I had planned on making two each of the regular Pillowcase and the Stepped-Up Pillowcase, and then when I saw how quick and easy the regular Pillowcase was, I decided to work on a UFO that had been sitting around for two years.

Night sky fabric that The Husband chose 2+ years ago.

I thought I had enough fabric to make just two pillowcases, but apparently I had enough to make four, so by the end of this week I'll have made eight pillowcases!  Sergeant Serger is a speed demon!

For this UFO I used the same basic pattern as the standard Pillowcase, but then I added some trim.  The main body and the band were the same fabric, but if you have three different fabric designs for the body, band and trim, you can get all sorts of looks for your pillowcases!

Maybe the success of the Pillowcases was the Universe's way of offsetting the disaster that was to happen with the Stepped-Up Pillowcases.  As you'll see, the Stepped-Up Pillowcases started off alright, but then became a sewing embarrassment of epic proportions.

The next step in making the main body for the Stepped-Up Pillowcases was to serge the patchwork pieces together.  When you learn to use a sewing machine, you are trained to liberally pin your sewing projects for a variety of reasons.  Not so with serging, and I'm not sure why.  Maybe because the knife might chop the pins up?  In any case, because the strips of fabric were a yard long, I ended up using pins, but made sure they'd be far from the serger knife.

I stitched up all the pieces side-by-side and then trimmed it so that the main body would measure 28x36.  So far, so good.

Private side of main body patchwork.

 Now it's time to work on the ruffle.  I chose three different fabrics to make up the ruffle.

After serging them together end to end, I adjusted the serger settings to create a rolled edge hem.  To be honest, I didn't read the pattern completely through before starting the project, so I didn't know that a rolled hem would be part of it, but I'm glad that it is, because now I'm forced to do that technique.

A rolled hem is a simple looking stitch, but it can make a piece look more elegant, especially if you use a decorative thread.  You might recognize it from handkerchiefs and napkins.  I like the look, but have not actually made one before using a serger.  I once tried to do it on my sewing machine using a rolled hem foot, but it didn't turn out right.

I ran a swatch through and it came out perfect the first time through, so I ran the patchwork band through.  I didn't have any decorative thread, so I just used the plain white serger thread, but it still looked nice.

A perfect rolled hem.

Now it was time to attach the band to the main body.  The serger has a gathering foot that ruffles the fabric and attaches it to another piece of fabric at the same time.  I ran some fabric through by itself to see how well the ruffling came out.  It didn't look so good.  There was some gathering, but not as much as I expected.  I was expecting to see as much gathering as there was in the book's photo.

Very disappointing.  But that was only the beginning.  I did another test to see how well the ruffling came out when the two pieces of fabric were seamed together.  It didn't turn out any better, so I decided that what I would do would be to gather the pillow band by hand, and then serge the two pieces together.  BIG MISTAKE.  When I ran the pieces through, the serger undid all the hand gathering that I made.  I should have thought about it beforehand, or, like I've said again and again, do a test, but it was late and I was tired and I just wanted to get it done.  Lesson learned:  Stitching while sleepy suspends sewing smarts.

So the "ruffle" ended up being a regular flat band of fabric attached to the main pillowcase body, and it looked absolutely ridiculous.  For the second ruffle pillow I ended up bunching up the fabric as it passed through the serger.  It looked only slightly better than the flat ruffle, but not by much.
 

Top:  Hand-bunched ruffles.
Bottom: Serger-made ruffles.

Disaster.  An absolute embarrassment.  A true debacle.  I could not believe what a mess these turned into.  Maybe someday I'll go back and fix the ruffling, but for now, I'll just hide them at the bottom of the pillow pile.