Veggie Shirt for Elliot

For Christmas this year I received a serger (cue cheering) from my mom- and dad-in-law, who were happy to give it although they were a little confused about what it actually was.

So here's one of my first projects, a knit shirt for Elliot:

The fabric is knit jersey (so: different on the front than the back, unlike interlock knit which looks the same on both sides). The orange pieces were scraps leftover from Kricket's Christmas top.

It looked a little boring, so I stenciled some veggies onto it to make it cuter and distract from the inevitable food stains toddler wear seems to attract:

:: Shirt in action ::

Here's the lovely piece of equipment that made this all possible, a Brother 1034D. Some of you may remember my request for serger suggestions. A few of you (Wonder Woman and Liz) suggested a Brother, so I looked at the reviews and went with it! This one has two needles, four spools, and overlocks but does not coverlock (see the comments in that linked post for the difference between the two).

And for those of you still wondering what the heck it does, I won't go into all the details, but one of the things it has is two feed dogs (those movey things that make the fabric go forward under the needle) instead of one like a normal machine. This means that when you are sewing knits, you can make one of the feed dogs go faster than the other one, which prevents puckering, a very common and frustrating (!) problem when sewing knits.