Monthly Archives: January 2010

So, now for the final installment of the making of this dress.
At this point it’s just a bit of finishing off to go; sewing the lining to the zip tape, and doing the hem.  It doesn’t sound like much, but hems are not to be rushed into, especially on a plain-ish dress like this one in which a wonky hem would stand out like a sore thumb.  The very simplicity of the dress’s style means that the hem has to be perfect, as there are no design details to draw the eye away from imperfections, not even a print on the fabric.
So I sew the lining on to the zip tape by hand.  A comment kindly directed me to a site where I could learn how to do this feature by machine… (haven’t checked it out yet) but I had already finished it by this stage!  

And the hem…  When I want it to be perfect there is no other way than this…  Remember when your mother got you to stand on a chair and slowly rotate while she measured and pinned your hems…?  I still do this for my daughter’s dresses but a person can’t help but shift weight a tiny bit from foot to foot, and move their hips, even the smallest amount and it really throws off your hem measurements, the beauty of Bessie is that she’s rock steady.

After I’ve trimmed the hem allowance to 5cm (I pull the dress onto the ironing board to do this), overlock the edge, pin up and press, I trim the lining to be the same length as the pinned-up hem of the dress proper.  Then I fold the lining up on the inside 1cm, press, fold up another 1cm, press, then sew it by machine.  This results in a lining hemmed exactly 2cm  shorter than my dress length, which is perfect…

I make some bias binding out of voile…

And attach this by machine to the edge to cover the overlocking stitches, press the bias edges under, then finally slip stitch the hem invisibly into place…

Voila!

I feel like a bit of a fraud modelling it as I’m not wearing it today and I don’t intend to wear it until autumn.  I am wearing the scarf (which I also made over the weekend) and shoes today, but with a different dress!
Truth be told, I finished this dress two days ago; I did say I’d been sewing like a demon, I’ve also finished my next two re-fashion projects which are lined up for those Wardrobe Refashion posts, man I’ve got to slow down…  Good news (?!) is that our office computer is up and running so I can get onto a mountain of office work as of this week…  yay (in a small, depressed voice)…

Details:
Dress; Burda 8511, modified, purple hessian silk
Scarf; turquoise silk chiffon, self-made
Shoes; lasoffitadi Gjilde, from Zomp

I last left off this exciting saga (ha ha) with the front and back sewn to their facing/linings at the armhole edges and neckline, and the seam allowances clipped and graded.

I then turned the front and back pieces right side out, eased the seams open and pressed, then understitched the facings on the curved part of the seams.  I hope everyone understitches their facings, I think it makes a huge difference to keeping those facings on the inside where they should be, and not rolling out to the outside.  It’s difficult to see in the photo, (I’ve made it a big photo to help) but my unpicker and the pencil are pointing to the understitching seams.  You can’t really sew all the way up to the edge of the seams, because you are trying to sew up a tube and that’s impossible, at least on my machine, but just understitching around the curves results in a much cleaner, nicer edge that sits flat.

Now for the shoulder seams.  I sew the front and backs together, at this point I either congratulate myself on careful measuring getting those gaps exactly the same width, or I’m kicking myself I didn’t measure precisely and check properly (see part 1); nowadays I am super accurate with this part as I’ve come to grief here before…. don’t want to talk about it, but it means redoing those arm and/or neck seams again….

Then I carefully clip the corners a bit (not too closely if the fabric is a real fray-er, like this silk is) in the photo above the left side is clipped but not the right, press open with my fingers (not an iron), turn the facing shoulder seams in and pin closed, then handstitch the facing shoulder seams closed…  in the photo below I’ve stitched the right seam and just pinned the left side.  In the photo you can also see one of my sewing assistants who often helps out by plonking herself down right in the thick of things at some crucial step..

Now for the zip…  I overlock the edges of the left side seam (if you’re a left-hander you might prefer to have your zip on the right side seam, probably one of the reasons you’re a dressmaker is so you can have this feature where you want it rather than where commercial clothing manufacturers have decided for you)  Then I physically try on the dress and pin it closed down the side seams to check just where I want them and mark front and back with pins…

Then insert the zip along these markings.  I perhaps should have taken more photos during the zip insertion process, but I always get in a bit of a zip-insertion zone at this stage and didn’t think to pick up the camera.  Anyhoo, I put the zip in, sewing from top to bottom both sides… then after this sew the seam below the zip, again from top to bottom.  Do others do it this way also?  I find if I do one side of the zip top to bottom, the the other side bottom to top, and/or the dress seam bottom to top, it’s very difficult to avoid little lumps or bumps in the seam. I think it’s because the upper and under fabric pieces shift due to tiny variations in the rate of the feed dogs on the under side compared to the rate you control the fabric feeding into the machine…  Any thoughts anyone?  It’s taken me a few imperfect zips that require unpicking and re-doing to settle on this rigid “top to bottom” rule that I never break now…  Here is the zip inserted, and the pins you can see are the lining pinned to the zip tape on the inside (photo of this further below)

Then I sew the right side seam following my markings, both the dress and the facing/lining top to bottom, and overlock/finish this seam…  (I know this looks a little tight on Bessie but the truth is that she’s a tad bigger than me and although I’m struggling to close the zip on her I have plenty of breathing space when the dress is on me… another trial and error thing I’ve learnt to adapt to)

Here is the photo of the inside of the dress so far, with the lining pinned to the zip tape ready for handsewing…. Does anyone know how to do this by machine successfully… that’s a holy grail for me, as it always ends up looking like a lumpy mess when I’ve tried and needs re-doing.  Until I can learn how to do this I’m handstitching for a perfect finish..

Finishing stages of the dress in a few days…