New Look 6803 : Woman's Tunic (View D) Part 2

Finally got to working on the tunic again. I decided not to interface the back facing; we'll see how that turns out.

Today I spent much of the sewing in serging the individual pieces. I'm definitely getting much better at inside and outside curves and even sharp inside corners. I'm very happy with how well it turned out.

I believe that most things you have to do repeatedly to get good at and serging is definitely one of these things. I think that without doing it (and doing all variations of serging) you don't even get to understand how something could get better. Many of the tips I've read online and in books have come together for me. For instance how to serge without trimming off fabric and then switching to a section where you want to trim fabric. For how to secure serger threads at the start at the end of the seam.

Also I noticed that when serging outside curves, the looper threads have to be loosened since the loops travel a bit more distance between one needle and the next. The reverse is true when serging inside curves; then you have to add more thread tension; meaning less thread passes between one needle and the next.  Although I'm not sure whether I'll want to continually change my thread tension when serging pieces.

I'm being very careful to try not to mess up the chalk transferred markings; I recently purchased the large tracing paper from Richard the Thread, but I have not tried it yet.

I had added additional darts and tucks to shape the tunic more. After finishing my serging I sewed up the side darts; made them longer and lowered the bust point (BP). and also one side of the dart.  I made up a size 14 originally, but found that I could have made a size 10 so added lots of darts and tucks to take out the additional ease. However, once I finish the muslin, I'll probably have to make a call whether I want to keep all the additional darts. It's kind of painful to have to add so many darts in. I packed it up after that since I realized I was feeling a little rushed.

One last thing; I stay stitched on my collar and after that, checked it against the pattern piece. I realize that although it may be easy in the moment to hang onto fabric for dear life to make the stitching straight, it probably stretches the pieces and adds unwanted length . . . now that I think about it, that's probably what happened to the little boy's shirt I just finished; the body was 1/4' to 3/8" longer than the sleeve.

On that note, I still have NOT sent the shirt to my friend. I really need to get that taken care of!!! Tomorrow I'll address the manila envelop and fold the shirt in. Then all I'll need to do is drop it off Monday morning.