Sew Along: The Sylvie Dress

Lesson Info

Materials & Tools

Along with your pattern, you're going to get a little pdf print out that's the full instructions, it's just like the printed version that you would get if you were to buy my pattern in the printed form. The final page, which is the equivalency of the back of the pattern, has a little bit about what kind of fabric is most appropriate for the sylvia dress because you and view being are a little bit different in the skirt. You can use a wide range of fabrics, but some of the fabric she would use for view be because of the fitted skirt you actually wouldn't want to use for view a sofer view a, which is the version I'm wearing. We have this full gathered skirt not all fabrics like to be gathered in this way, because if it's too thick or too bulky, this is going to get really thick and it's going to get really poofy and potentially unflattering and it's just gonna be really hard to work with. We also have the binding on the inside of our arm, holes and neckline, and if you choose to use a th...

icker fabric like for view, be that you may want to choose something a little bit lighter to use for the binding, so for view a or for view be you can use a medium toe lightweight fabric some examples of that would be something kind of drapey. This is a vintage ran from the forties has really good drape if you're ever unsure what kind of draped the gathers air going to provide, you can just simply hold it up and see how it falls how's that fabric fall, how does it look once it's sort of hold together? How is that gathering going to actually look once I've made it into my skirt, another good lightweight fabric is a thin lawn or of wall. This is a very thin cotton, also from the forties, and you can see it's quite shear, but it also has really nice light draped to it that would be another excellent choice, some sort of long or of wall. You can also use more of a quilt, wait cotton or a similar type of woven like a lightweight linen, which is I'm wearing a quilt wait right now, just for some perspective, this also is more like a quilt. Wait another vintage piece from my joy enormous stash of fabric, and you can see if you gather it up it's going to gather up quite nicely. You can use any of these for either of you a or view be one nice treat about the way I designed this skirt isn't the dirndl darnall means that it's actually just a giant rectangle instead of an a line it doesn't pitch out it just actually is a big rectangle so you can cut the skirt either on grain or on the cross grain. One of the bonus things about that is that you can use something that has a border print on it because traditionally be using the length of grain on the skirt or on the whole dress but because you can use it on the cross grain you can use something that has either a border print like this this one is similar except that this is actually all embroidered it's really beautiful piece but it's right on the salvage so you know that it's facing the salvage like a border print you can also use something like an island that has a finished salvage on the edge but that's just an option not mandatory that you do that for view be because we have the fitted pencil skirt weaken up our wait a little bit more and use something a little bit heavier. We can use all of those that I just talked about except the border print but we can also use something a little bit more weighty. This is a vintage piece of bark cloth so you can see it's a little bit stiffer it has a little last rape and it will hold that pencil shaped skirt really well and you wouldn't want to gather with this for view a because it would just be too bulky in addition to the fabric you're going to need a few other notions and tools we all were going I find that the neckline and the arm hole with bias finding in the pattern we're actually going to talk through how to make your own, but a lot of people prefer to use store bought ready made finding has totally fine. The big difference is that traditionally this is usually a cotton poly blend and so you want to take that into account when you're working with your fabric it might not be the right pairing if you use something lightweight like a lawn or of wall, it might be too heavy but this is just a double fold extra wide bias finding you can use this or you can make your own we're also going to use piping in view be above and below the waist man you can use that on view a as well if you prefer and you can leave it off all together you can again use store about buying the piping just totally fine or you can make your own I'm going to teach you how to make your own and if you want to do that you will need the courting which goes inside the fabric to actually make the courted piping recorded piping is basically like bias finding with this piping with this courting sewn right into it lastly, the other notion that you're going to need is, of course, a zipper. The pattern calls for a twenty two inch invisible zipper if you're not super familiar with zippers it's really important to know the difference between a regular zipper and an invisible zipper? A regular zipper has the teeth and the pole on the same side and invisible zipper has the pole on the front and the teeth on the back so it's a really important difference, so make sure that you get an invisible zipper that's twenty two inches in length doesn't have to match perfect perfect because the only part if inserted right the only part we're going to see is the actual poll and the poll you can even change if you want to know painted with nail polish you can change the color, but you want to try to get as close as you can, but it doesn't have to match absolutely perfectly. Those are all of the fabric and notions that you're going to need to make either of you a or of you b of the silver dress in addition to the fabric and notions you're going to need a variety of tools to complete your silver dress many of these are things you're going toe probably already have on hand, but there are a few specialty items that I highly recommend um first let's just talk through cutting tools obviously you're going tohave a good pair of super sharp fabric shears I like these these are eight inch sheers there ben handle cheers so that this part will remain flat up against your cutting surface while you're cutting your fabric out we don't ever want to cut our patterns out though with our good fabric sheer so we want to always have a good pair of paper shares on hand as well so that when we're cutting out our pattern we have another pair I just use thes little guys here to cut my paper out with there's a lot of trimming that's gonna happen on the inside of the garment and it's kind of hard to do with your big aid and cheers so these little five and cheers are really handy for that they aren't been handled that so that I can actually get in and cut as needed they're not meant for cutting flat on the surface the way that the eight inch ones are when you're cutting out your fabric this is to do all of the trimming on the inside of our garment we use the eight inch ones there's a good chance that you might accidentally cut something that you don't mean to cut and our last cutting tool is entirely optional it's our rotary cutter many of you might prefer actually cutting out your fabric with a rotary qatar instead of with your shears that's totally fine, it's just a personal preference. If you are going to use a rotary cutter, you probably need to use some sort of weights. These air, my little pattern lates there. They look like marshmallows, but they're actually quite heavy. They're going to hold my pattern down onto my fabric so that I can cut around with my rotary cutter. We're going to do some measuring tools. The first thing we want to do, of course, is measure our body. So we need a tape measure for that so that we can measure around the curves of our body. We're going to need also along our ruler that's clear and see through so that I can put all my pieces on green. This is the one I use some people have on eighteen inch ruler just also really common. I like this one that's really thick. Andi, it just has a really good job of getting all the way to this salvage when I want to put my pieces on green and I also like that it has the forty five degree angle on it. If I'm working with something on the bias when I'm marking all of my darts, I find that ruler to be a little bit too big, so I like to use the smaller ruler for that. This is just a little eight inch ruler, the same thickness and same sturdiness but it's a little bit easier to handle when I'm marking like my bus starts and my skirt darts um, obviously you're going to need your selling machine, but in addition to your regular foot, we're going to need to specialty feed we're going to need your regular super fun. This is what my looks like, it's a thin sort of half foot, a lot of them are actually sort of shaped like the letter I with a little indentation that you can get close to your zipper whichever one comes with your machine is totally fine, but we will need our regular zipper foot even though we're putting in an invisible supper and we're also going to need our invisible zipper foot. Most machines do not come with this foot, so it's something you're going to need to seek out and actually buy for your machine. Ah, highly recommend going to the dealer for your brand and making sure that if it's the make and model of your machine and it has little grooves on the bottom so that the teeth will ride into the bottom of the foot and of course we'll learn a lot more about that if you're unfamiliar with it when we go to put our zipper in also for your machine, we're going to need needles the needle weight is entirely dependent on the fabric choice that you've made these are micro texts from schmitz these are the ones I used every day in my selling I really prefer them ah micro text needle is a little bit more of a finer point it's meant for a woven fabric instead of for a minute or a universal um these are eighty twelve, seventy tens and ninety fourteen these are the most common ones that you're going to come across that they're going to suit your pattern or your fabric wait um a seventy ten would be really good for like a lawn or of all and eighty it would be really great for a quilt weight or sort of medium weight and the ninety fourteen would be good if you're doing view be in something a little heavier like a bark cloth or a cotton canvas or a linen campus we're going to need a bunch of just everyday tools that you probably have in your studio we're gonna need r c engaged to make all kinds of perfect precise markings around the garment it's a really handy tool we're going to need our seam ripper not just because we might make a mistake, but we also need to take out all of the gathering based stitches along the way if you're doing view a we're going to need marking pencils I really love these clover water soluble pencils they come in pink, white and blue so you want to get a color that you can see on the inside and the outside of your fabric and we'll need a good sharpener for that as well because they'd all really quickly we want our point on our markings to be really, really fine and perfect, so we need to sharpen them all the time and of course we'll need pins I prefer the glass had pins so the little ball on the top is actually glass instead of plastic that way I can press right on top of them without fear of the fall, not hot melting because of the heat of my iron and of course, some sort of pain question to hold them. I like the magnetic ones we will of course need thread is actually so and this isn't sort of an afterthought item you want to definitely be sure that you get the right thread for the kind of fabric you're working with most of the time you're going to find either all cotton or all polyester for this project either of those would work really well, I definitely prefer an all in one like all cotton or all polyester versus those that come in to blend the other thing to think about with your thread is that this dress has a lot of exposed top stitching we're going to have stitching around the neckline around the arm hole, we're going to have it on the pockets if you're making view a all the way around, and of course we're going to have it on the ham as well. So think about the color when you're choosing your thread it's not just about the content, but also how does that color work with the fabric choice that you've selected so you can make it a contrast if you want to have contracting routine, or if you're feeling a little shaky about your tops a chain, of course you wanted to blend in. The easiest way to blend of thread to your fabric is to choose something a little bit darker, because darkness recedes. So if it's between something a little light or a little dark always want to go a little bit dark, um, another couple tools that we're going to need it, I find it's really helpful when there are a lot of darts involved, as this one has to highlight or mark the actual darts on the paper with some sort of marker. So either a highlighter or just some sort of colored marker pen would be really helpful for marking the darts on the paper on the pattern, and we're going to also need some pressing tools, probably if you're selling already, you already own an iron. Though I'm surprised at how many of my students don't own iron, so I'm here to tell you that you need to buy an iron if you don't already own one and some sort of either a full ironing board or the little half one that comes off of the door, you're short for space or the little have the ones that sits on a table, but some sort of ironing board to go with your iron, and we're also going to need a pressing ham, ham eyes basically there to take the shape of your body. Once you've molded the fabric to no longer be two dimensional, we're going to be making darts at the bust and at the hip and the curve of the skirt on beauty b has a pretty big curve for your hips, so once we've sown those fabric pieces together, it's no longer going to be flat and we need something round and kirby to go into the fabric. So when we press it's going to remain, then that curve shape lastly, and this is entirely optional you can instead of just cutting out your fabric or your pattern pieces right out of the pdf, you can also trace them off, so if you choose to do that, you might want to buy swedish tracing paper. This is it in a role if you've never worked with this before it's pretty incredible stuff. It's not very expensive. You can find it online. And it's called swedish tracing paper and it's not actually like paper at all. I have a little small piece here. You can see it's a little bit more like fabric and it's really strong, and you can actually sew with it so you can trace your pattern onto this, even even so, a muslim version out of this but it's a really nice way to transfer your pattern onto something else so that you're not cutting your actual pdf pattern. If you do this, you're going then need also a mechanical pencil with a really good point because you want to be able to make those really good, fine lines on the sweetest trace the paper and you're gonna need pattern waits to that I showed you earlier, eh? So that you can weigh everything down when you're tracing out, and those are all the tools that we're going to need. Many of those air probably things you've seen before, but there are a few key things that are going to really help elevate our sewing like are pressing ham and our seem gauge.

Class Description

Lessons

1Instructor & Class Overview
2Materials & Tools
3The Sylvie Dress - PDF Pattern overview
4Choosing Your Size
5Cutting out the Fabric
6Interfacing the Waistband
7Stay Stitching the Bodice
8Creating Darts
9Sewing the Bodice
10Adding the Waistband - View A
11How to Make Piping
12Sewing the Piping to the Waistband
13Adding the Waistband - View B
14Sewing the Pockets
15Sewing Skirt View A
16Sewing Skirt View B
17Adding the Invisible Zipper
18Making Your Own Binding
19Applying the Neck Binding
20Applying the Armhole Binding
21Hemming the Skirt
22Modeling the Skirt