It was made up of a satin base for the dress with layers of chiffon. Every other layer was pleated and all of the layers were on an angle, or asymmetrical. Since she needed so much off the bottom layer, a pleated one, I was afraid it would look like the last layer was just barely peaking out. But back to the beginning of this job, I was going to have to shorten the satin layer first, then the underlining, then the two layers of stiff netting before I worried about the chiffon. You might know it, the satin layer has a fine net stiffener all around so I needed to take out two rows of stitching and reapply that stiffener. Because there was a train, I didn't have to take out the entire hem, just the front and tapering back to the train. The underlining and layers of netting were pretty easy so that left only that chiffon, the part that would really show.
I decided I need to master the hemmer foot and now I had yards of chiffon that I just cut off to practice on. Enter the Singer 201 with a standard hemmer foot:
Singer 201 with hemmer foot |
Hemmer foot in action (or in-action) |
Then I remembered how great the Bernina's stitched and they had a whole collection of hemmer feet so I got out the Bernina 830 Record with foot #168:
Bernina foot #168 |
From the top, those two models of hemmer feet hardly look different but when turned over there are differences. Look at the hem the Bernina made:
Bernina hemmer foot in action |
Moral of the story: when faced with a high level task, go for the best equipment. Bernina is know for their marvelous quality of stitches and their feet might be expensive but for hemmers, they were the best. Did the hem look like it was a tiny ruffle at the bottom? Not at all, it looked perfect and she will be a perfect bride.
1 comment:
Sounds like a beautiful dress.
I have a Bernina rolled-hem foot I use for shirt hems. Yes, the Bernina feet are great.
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