Sometime last year I wrote about cottage sewing. Well, this weekend, it was lakehouse sewing. What’s the difference? It could be the cost of the fabric (3x anything I’ve used before) or the setting (obviously a lake house) or the actual project.

Marilyn asked me to plan on a weekend at her lake house in Wisconsin to help make new covers for a day bed up in her loft. The cushions were perfectly fine except they were the wrong color (blue.) So we set aside a weekend, she chose fabric, and we decided on our overall plan. Oh, and I bought my new serger 🙂

A serger is a machine that cuts and finishes edges, as well as a few other things. One website described it as a kind of “knitting” on a sewing machine, which delighted me. It’s a pretty complicated machine so not for the faint of heart, which I am. I’ve actually had three sergers. One was a hand-me down gift, which didn’t work well. The second was a second-hand machine which frustrated me no end. In it’s last days, I would only serge if my engineering husband was around to re-thread it for me when the threads broke, which happened a lot. So I decided to buy myself a brand new, air-jet threading, reliable serger. It even has a needle threader.

On Friday, Marilyn and I drove six hours to Stormy Lake, near Conover, Wisconsin. We delayed leaving in the morning so that I could take my second “free” serger class, which was a mistake. I thought I might learn some helpful hints that I would need for our project. Instead I was told that I could come back for more classes ($$), join their serger club (at $25 a session), or purchase a $40 CD. Basically the two classes were sales pitches to buy more gizmos, gadgets, etc. Frustrating.

When we arrived, we hopped in the hot tub and relaxed. I’m guessing most cottages don’t have hot tubs, another reason this is a lake house.

The next morning, after breakfast, we started in.

Our first task was to make a test run using an old sheet. Normally I might take the old covers apart to use as a pattern, but we didn’t want to do that since they were still in good shape. So we measured and cut, sewed, and made adjustments. We happened to use stripped sheets, which made it clear that we needed to be careful in our cutting to make sure the subtle stripes in the fabric all ran the same direction. Making a mock-up, also helped me figure out that the corners needed to be rounded, not square. Here is the handy tool that I used to cut the corners–a measuring cup!

That first day, we completed our trial run and got all the zippers in. We actually had to find an extra long zipper at an upholsterer and drive 45 minutes to go pick it up. Too bad it was nice and sunny and we could put the top down on the convertible. Marilyn has a car like mine, only blue. We stopped on the way home to pick up some groceries and then spent another half-hour on the dock before it clouded over and we returned inside to our work.

All night long I kept trying to figure out how to put the cushions together, as I knew that those corners would be a little more difficult with heavier fabric. I kept going over and over the process in my mind until I decided to baste the corners on the regular sewing machine first, then serge the edges. I actually ended up basting all the seams in slow motion with a long stitch. It went well, and it was easy to run the serger around the edges, finishing all the seams.

For the most part, I sewed and Marilyn did all the cutting. Neither of us really wanted to do that other one’s job. I didn’t want to cut into expensive cloth and she didn’t want to sew. She did topstitch the zippers. She also cooked 🙂

Here’s the finished project, though the color isn’t right. The fabric to the right is better with the colors. You can also see a serged seam. The bottom picture shows the interesting design of this 100 year old pull out daybed:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lake house sewing is a little more meticulous than cottage sewing. Although Marilyn was perfectly gracious about everything, my standards were higher, and therefore the stress level higher too. But now that it is finished it was a fun project. I love my serger more than ever.

But I’m going back to quilting…and cottage sewing.

And I’m also coming back to the lake house in July with a new granddaughter, our two grandsons, the Kiwi couple (James and Anne) and the rest of the family. Woo hoo!