The Nightgown Project – Part 7- Front Band Refining

Howdy All!

I had a chance to work on the nightgown yesterday and one of the things that was bothering me was the Front Band width at Center Front. It looked a little wonky. I knew what the problem most likely was, too much width, just how to go about fixing it?

I used a water soluble marker and my seam gauge to fine tune the stitching lines. This is going to make the V-neck a little deeper but it was my only choice right now since the bottom has already been cut. We’ll just have to wait and see how this completes to know if it too low. But then, can a nightgown be too low? I ironed in some light Pellon fusible interfacing and stitched along the seam line for some stay stitching (and a guide to help me once I connect this with the garment). I folded up the seam allowances and checked how everything looked on the mannequin, even pinned up some lace to see if the PINK needed to get toned down. Was this band looking more like an OLYMPIC MEDAL ribbon hanging on the neckline? Did it need a lace overlay?

Oh! So many design choices…! I’ll be continuing to work on this band tonight and most likely leave off the lace overlay as I want to just see how everything is working together as far as the pattern is concerned. A lace overlay can always come in another edition and going without it I’ll be able to see the LINES of the style clearer.

As a side note and while I’m thinking about it I wanted to let you all know about a recent comment I received from Charlie Merrow, CEO of Merrow Sewing Machine Co. . A few days after I posted my question to the Internet Ether about ‘Merrowing’ Charlie wrote in with this…

While sometimes it’s tough to read that ‘merrowing’ has become a generic term, we’d like to think that it still describes a process that had a great impact on all of us. The first Merrow overlock machine (which is in fact the first overlock machine, period still resides at our facility in Fall River and helped shape the development of garment production for the last century.

We continue to build remarkable sewing machines. One of our core customer groups are designers in the US, Europe and Asia, and we are the only sewing machine manufacturer that will develop clothing prototypes and sew patterns (creating new sewing machines along the way) at a nominal charge – and despite the machines running quite fast, they really are a great addition to the sample room or studio.

Almost every day we’re developing interesting variations of overlock stitches on different materials and with a wide variety of threads – a case in point is our new ActiveSeam stitch, a new versatile flat overlock stitch. With ActiveSeam we’ve introduced new stitch, a new model for marketing stitching, and a development process where we assist the building of new products with ActiveSeam.

In a world with more and more mass produced mediocre schlock, we hope that someday ‘Merrowing’ will be synonymous not with overlock sewing BUT the process of creating innovative and quality overlock seams. We work towards that, every single day.

– Best,
Charlie Merrow
CEO Merrow Sewing Machine Co.

The Internet is an amazing place, isn’t it my friends? Now I know how the folks at Merrow are feeling about that term being thrown about, would we, or should we say, so carelessly? And I suppose on a brighter note, I don’t feel so bad anymore about being so ignorant of the term ‘Merrowing’!! If Merrow themselves would rather not us banter around the sewing room equating ‘serging’ and ‘overlocking’ with ‘Merrowing’ than that’s the way it shall forever be here as well. Glad we got all that sorted out. And thank you Mr. Merrow!

~Till next time, keep on sewing!

~Cathy