Serging My Way Around the Pacific Northwest

Serger class on Monday went well. I had four students—three with newer air-threading BabyLock machines and one with a vintage HuskyLock that had belonged to a friend’s mother. This store is a BabyLock dealer, so I expect to see at least a couple of BabyLock machines in my classes there.

[The young woman with the HuskyLock mentioned that she had just gotten an industrial Sailrite sewing machine “because my husband keeps bringing me his Carhartt work pants and asking me to fix them.” I laughed.]

Some aspects of teaching are very predictable. I always have a couple of students who come into class very anxious and asking lots of questions right off the bat. I spend the first few minutes reassuring them that yes, I will talk about needles and yes, I will talk about thread and yes, I will talk about when to use which stitch. We always start with an explanation of terminology and a tour of my serger, which I have set up and threaded with four different colors of thread to make it easy to see how the stitches are made.

I’ve seen so many machines by now that I can trace the development of serger technology from the bare bones domestic machines that came out in the early 1980s all the way to the slick air-threading ones available today. I am careful not to allow my biases to creep into class, though—I told the young woman with the HuskyLockthat a $300 serger worked just fine for me for seven years and that I still use it even after upgrading to a fancier machine. Being familiar with a basic machine also will give her an idea of what features are most important to her when she does upgrade. I did suggest that she get the HuskyLock serviced, though, as we were having trouble adjusting the differential feed settings.

All of the students seemed happy and comfortable using their machines by the end of class. One lady was still there serging practice pieces when I left. She said she was having so much fun she didn’t want to stop.

The owner of the store in Spokane called yesterday morning and we’ve got a Serger 101 class scheduled at that store in August. She’s doing a quilt show this weekend and said she’ll advertise the class there. I’m still waiting to hear from the other quilt store in Kalispell about what they want to put on the calendar. That store offers a lot of classes and clubs and it’s been hard to shoehorn more serger classes into the schedule, although I do have a Serger 101 class there on July 5. I’m kicking around the idea of approaching the other quilting store in Spokane—they are a Bernina dealer—to teach classes there. They have a Bernina Serger Club but I very rarely see serger-specific classes on their schedule. If I am going to Spokane to teach, I might as well make it worth the trip.

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We have a few days of dry weather before the next round of rain moves in. I’ll need to try to get the grass cut today and a few more things into the ground out in the garden. I also have some weeding to do, but the black plastic really helps keep that to a dull roar.

The peas are looking good.

The grapes are budding out, finally.

I’m a bit concerned about what the garden is going to produce given that the growing season seems like it’s going to be short(er) this year. This is the kind of weather that I remember from the first few years we lived here, though, and I had a garden then, so it’s not like nothing will grow. I might just have to alter my expectations a bit. And I love how lush everything looks from the rain.