A few weeks ago, I posted how to make a bralette with your sewing machine. I hope you have had a chance to try it? But you can’t have a pretty bralette without matching undies -right? I pulled this awesome sewing themed knit out of my scrap bin and made some “Vicki Hipsters” from another Made for Mermaids pattern. I was a little nervous, having only previously made undies with bands on the edges. All the other times I have tried with fold over elastic turned out to be “unwearable unmentionables”. So I thought, there has to be an easier way to put picot elastic onto underwear leg openings and around the waist.
The Elastic Attachment for the Cover-Pro machines was exactly the right thing. But how exactly do you do that? It’s all about how your hold your tongue, right? (Mine sticks out the side of my mouth when I’m concentrating and my kids laugh at me lol). Today I want to show you two ways to do it.
The first way is the traditional way of applying elastic. Pin your middle and ends, anchor the beginning of it and stretch slightly as you sew. On your sewing machine, this can be fairly simple. On a Janome coverhem serger however, it’s a different story. Because the speed is faster, you can very quickly derail your elastic application if you look away for even the briefest moment. This will result in uneven lines of stitching, or worse, sewing right off the edge of the elastic. So Janome has come up with a better way of doing this. Using the Elastic Attachment gives you that extra hand we all wish we had when encountering even simple tasks. Let me show you how it works.
First of all, let’s look at the anatomy of this attachment. It comes on a metal plate that attaches to your Janome Cover-Pro machine, and has a clasp that opens it up, revealing the plate which provides pressure onto your elastic. More pressure = more gathers.
It also has a sliding guide which allows you to snugly fit your elastic to the edge. This results in a consistent location for your elastic as you sew and you aren’t trying to wiggle it all over the place.
I like to pin the end of my elastic to the fabric just until I get those first couple stitches in there to anchor it. After that, all I have to do is make sure that my fabric is lined up. By adding this simple attachment into your toolbox, you can easily make your own undergarments, swim wear and more! Head on over to watch the video of both methods here.
Until next time,
JanomeGirl