Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Zipper and Tragedy

While working on my skirt for the Great Gatsby Sewing Challenge on Sunday I came across some difficulty in the zipper department.
I am making have made the skirt in  a nice medium weight poly/ wool blend coating in an eggplant purple color. When I got to the zipper step, I tried to be a good girl and go by the pattern instructions and sew the zipper from the right-side of the skirt. However, with the thickness of the wool and the bias-tap seam binding, I had to start over twice when I had a thread snag after the initial few stitches across the base of the zipper. I think it was the weight in combination with the dark color of the fabric that was making things hard.
I stood up to unpick the snags in front of my ironing board and when I turned to sit back down in front of my sewing machine I tripped over my iron cord THROWING MY IRON TO THE FLOOR!
Now, our sewing room is in the basement, so this was a fall to wood over concrete floors. As I looked in disbelief at my iron, now laying in a puddle of water on the floor, I was sure that my it was totally broken and would never even turn on!
This was even more sad, because I had bought the iron, a Rowenta, at a great mark down, almost 60% off since it was a floor model at Target. I knew I would never be able to replace it for the $36 I had originally spent.
When I looked it over I could hear a rattling behind the bottom of the faceplate. It turned back on and it seemed to heat properly, but any water I attempted to pour into the steam reservoir quickly leaked out of the base of the iron.
OH NO! I thought, I CAN'T DO ANY DECENT FINISH WORK WITHOUT A GOOD STEAM IRON!
I sat down and finished my zipper. From the inside this time, with a piece of  1/2 inch tape over the zipper seam as a guide. It came out perfect, looking great from front and back.
When my mom came home and came in to check on my progress, I told her about my iron tragedy, and how I wouldn't be able to finish my project, let alone future projects without a good functioning iron, and I didn't know how I was going to come up with the money for a new iron.
Luckily, she said that she would help me out by buying it for me so I could stretch the purchase out between two paychecks. Yeah mom!
And I was only set back by one day, because she was able to take me shopping on Monday night.
I got another Rowenta for $89 (eek!). I know you don't have to pay that much for a good iron, but I didn't want to have to order from Amazon and wait a week for my iron only to find that mine had been damaged in transit. I don't shop at Wal-Mart for moral reasons, so the brands they carry there were out. I didn't want to buy one at  Jo Ann's, since I know their appliances are usually pricey unless they have a sale on them. So I went with what had worked for me last time and bought a Rowenta at Target. I also got a new ironing board so I could have one with the iron holding rack at the end and not risk another one falling and dieing.
I finished up the skirt on Tuesday and it looks pretty good if I do say so.
My camera batteries were dead or I would have uploaded a picture.
I will have to remedy that.
Next up, I will start on my blouse. Wish me luck on the sleeves!