More fish, less sweater

One of the things I had trouble wrapping my head round when lived in Hong Kong for a couple years was that just because it was night it didn’t mean that it was all of a sudden cooler and you needed to add a layer if you were going out. Sometimes the darn place seemed hotter at night. Nonetheless, I need some wraps for the icy cold shops and often quite chilly airplanes in which we will soon find ourselves. After some other sewing this morning (some scratch, some refashioning), I had a trawl through my boxes.

I saw a drapey front cardigan in the Big City last weekend: it was made in shear and knit fabrics. The shear piece that ran around the collar and front edge was all the same width. It was one of those ‘don’t-even-look-at-the-price/you-can-make-that’ moments we've all had. The fish scarf has been lurking in the ‘use for fabric’ box for a while, having been recycled from a project I decided was too young a look for me (I would link to my RFC post about this project but the contributor’s list usually on the left is not showing on my computer today, I didn't post it on my own blog and I am NOT going through the zillions of RFC posts to find it!). This old navy (Van Heusen actually) cardigan was in the refashion box. 

I cut two inches off the whole neck edge (getting rid of the buttons and buttonholes), then a few inches off the lower edge, then eight inches from the sleeve, lettuce edged the latter two and pinned the scarf (which is 14 inches wide) to the un-lettuced neck edge (RST). The scarf was longer than the neck and front edge

so instead of trimming it to fit and finishing the cut edge I found the center of the scarf and the center of the back of the cardigan then...convinced them to fit. I used a zig zag to neaten the seam. 

Himself keeps asking what I want for our 20th anniversary come this Wednesday. I’m thinking a serger, which would have been useful for that last step. ('How romantic', I hear you say. Hey, I've never been a flowers/chocolates/lingerie kinda girl when it comes to gifts. Give me a new set of counter sink drill bits and leave that other stuff). I’ve got on for forty-mumble years without a serger, but I hear if you get a good one you will wonder how you got on without it -- or maybe that was just a good pitch by the Janome saleswoman I chatted with a few months back while helping a friend chose a new machine. 

Any opinions on the matter? Is your serger the most used item in your house or does it function as a doorstop?