Gray Tights Gray Tights

The last visit to the craft thrift store brought some medium lightweight heathered gray four way stretch knit into my life.  I had no idea what I was going to do with it--it just looked too useful to leave behind (optimistically hoping it has a decent amount of cotton.)

A few nights ago, when I was trying to fall asleep, my brain blipped out the realization that this fabric would be perfect for sewn tights.

So that's what I did!  Two pairs, since there was enough fabric, and having multiple pairs of heavy gray tights seemed like a good idea (it was a bit chilly that day.)

I still don't know how to take a flattering photo of sewn tights, but, here they are, for the record

Their construction is straightforward, with the basic shape copied from a commercially-made pair of sewn tights I have--I added height to the center front and back seams, so the elastic can rest on top of my abdomen instead of cutting into it.  I decided to use the lockstitch machine on a narrow zigzag instead of the serger, even though the serger should work perfectly well for this.

I did have a frustrating time when I started zigzagging through all of the layers at the waist elastic, and the bobbin tension went wildly bad--just...incredibly loose on the bottom.  Conventional sewing wisdom says the tension problem source is on the opposite side of where the malformed stitches are, so I changed the top tension, to no effect; re-threaded the top, nothing; switched to a heavier (ballpoint) needle, no change.  I finally took out the bobbin case and saw that the thread had somehow completely worked itself out of the tension assembly.  I re-threaded the bobbin case and everything was fine.

Now that I have added these to my small assortment of cut and sewn tights, good for cool winter days, the temperature is climbing back into the 80s for a few days...until the next cold front sweeps in...