Coverstitch practice

I have a few king-size pillowcases. I'm never going to have those extra long pillows, so the I decided to cut off the excess length on the cases and serge the hems with coverstitch. It was good practice, but the pillowcases are a knit fabric which made it somewhat difficult.

I wanted the double seam to show on the right side, so I had to maneuver the folded raw edge on the underside. I guess I need the coverstitch hemming foot because it was very awkward the way I did it. So now I wonder should I buy the whole coverstitch kit to the tune of $200+, or just get the hemming foot.

Serging on a finished piece is always problematic because again you can't start & stop gracefully in the middle of a finished piece. With my pillowcases, my coverstitch hem began and ended 3 inches from the end of the case. So I just serged into it from the end and serged off to the end, making an extra curving double seam into the hem. It doesn't look too bad.

I also fine-tuned my coverstitch looper, noticing that I'd missed one hook in the threading below. The stitch looked better after that. I went back and tried the pintuck foot again, and the pintucks looked a little nicer too.

Pintucks

I worked out the problems, sort of: First of all, when thread breaks and pintucks don't look like I think they should, I go into a crazed troubleshooting mode. And with a serger, there are so many variables that may be causing the problem, you can fix one and then cause another.
I think the coverstitch looper wasn't threaded exactly right to start with. But I started playing with all the tensions at the same time I was adjusting the looper, and that made everything worse. In the end, I got pintucks with the recommended tensions...though that left needle thread did still sometimes break.
However, I learned something about pintucks: they aren't exactly what I though they were. They aren't like darts. I was trying to apply pintucks to a top that was too wide, and I expected them to draw in the fullness. But they barely do that at all. They really only draw in a tiny amount and make a little hill in the fabric.

Plus, the entire project was NOT suited to serger sewing at all because I was making the tucks begin and end in the middle of a finished garment. Anyone experienced with sergers would have told me not to use a serger for this project. Instead I figured it out for myself after I made the first tuck. DUH.... you can't stop in the center of a fabric with a serger!!!! But stubborn as I am, I went ahead and made 13 tucks, struggling to cut. the threads at the bottom of each one. Then I had to thread a hand needle multiple times to pull all those hanging threads to the wrong side.

Ridiculous...I will never do that again! But at least I know about serger pintucks now.

FRUSTRATION

I had a project in mind using pintucks, so i sent away for a pintuck foot for my serger. It's just 2 little pieces of clear plastic, $28.95!
I proceeded to unthread the setup for 4-thread overlock, and change to coverstitch mode. Even though I've done it before, I had to slowly take it step by step becauses, as Jon likes to point out, "I have the memory of a dead elephant." Once I had it all set up with coverstitch throat plate and all the settings, plus the new pintuck foot, I proceeded to try it out on scraps.
The results were not pretty. Either the left needle thread broke, or no pintuck was made, or both. By no pintuck, i mean the stitch just looks like a regular coverstitch, with no ridge between the needles for the tuck.
Must be something wrong with my threading that is causing the left thread to break. I may have solved that problem. But still no tucks are being made. After trying most of the afternoon, I had to give up. I'll start fresh tomorrow.