How I Made This Dress, Part 3...Finishing Up

When I have the bodice completely done on a dress, I have usually passed all the hard work. Just have to attach a simple skirt, and I'll be done! 

Not so with circle dresses. Those can be finicky to the very end. 

And not so with the tiered skirt to this dress, because I had a lot of work ahead of me to make all those gathers!

My mother told me how to do a tiered skirt. Here's the "formula" I used for how long each of my panels needed to be.

Here's how I did my panels...

I cut a panel and sewed the ends together (right sides together) to make a round. On one of the panels, I had to add extra yardage to make it the right length. This dress fit easily into 4 yards of fabric, using the excess from one panel to complete another.

I sewed 2 rows of gathers on one edge.

It would have been cute to just hem the bottom of this panel and have a blouse!

I gathered the second panel until it fit pretty well with my last panel, then sewed it up!

To this I added a short panel to complete the skirt.

I made a sash out of the dress material, and I was...done!!

Here's some more dress pictures.

Hope you enjoyed this dress-making process!

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

How I Made This Dress, Part 2...SLEEVES

 Hello all,

Here's another installment of photos and explanations from my recent dress project! Enjoy!

The inspiration for this dress was this 1940's tiered dress, and the fabric came from Joanns.

We left off in the last post with a sleeveless bodice. This post is about how I made the puffed sleeves!

To start off with, I laid my bodice by the section of fabric I had cut my bodice from. In the photo above, the armhole of the bodice is mirrored against the place where it was cut from. Note: the fold is at the top here. 

Cutting straight down from the top gives me this shape. FYI: The sleeve is facing the other direction than from the last photo.

I rolled the straight edge of the sleeve over twice and hemmed it.

In this picture I'm making a small cut into the folded sleeve to tell me how far to sew gathering stitches.

Here's my first row of gathering stitches: not back-stitched at the end, stitch length 5 on my machine.

I sewed another row next to it.

Then comes the fun part...making the gathers! I gathered until the left side of the sleeve was about the same size as the armhole.

I sewed the ends of the sleeve together. I didn't sew over the hem, though, because I'd need access the hem to string my elastic through.

It was time to attach the sleeve to the bodice. I put the sleeve around the armhole backwards, with right sides of the fabric together, and sewed around the armhole. I don't remember pinning it, but I might have.

Aligning the bottom of the sleeve and the top of the armhole.

Ta-da!! 

It would have been cute to leave it as a sort of butterfly sleeve, but its destiny was to be a puffed sleeve...

I cut 2 pieces of 1/4" elastic a little larger than the circumference of my upper arm. 

I attached a safety pin to one end, and threaded it through my hem/casing, When the end of the elastic was about to disappear into the casing, (it's a good thing to watch for) I stopped and sewed it down. 

When it was about to come out the other end, I sewed it down on that side too. Be careful not to sew over your safety pin when you secure that end of the elastic, by the way!

Then I stitched the rest of the under-arm seam shut, right over my elastic and hem.

I distributed the gathers around the sleeve opening.

Then...I made another sleeve ;).

I hope you enjoyed this sort-of-tutorial!

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

How I Made This Dress, Part 1

 Hello all,

I'm pretty excited about this new dress! It is a little different than the designs that I usually make. I documented a lot of the process so I could share it with you. Here goes Part 1!

The inspiration for this dress was this 1940's tiered dress, and the fabric came from Joanns.

First, I Visualized My Design

Here was my rough drawing of what I planned to make. Yes, the finished product turned out different. I changed some things...and forgot some things because I was not paying attention to my drawing. Just being honest!

 I used another dress I made to give me some dimensions for the bodice. I folded it in 1/2 and laid in on my folded fabric. (Look at this post to see how I fold my fabric)

My front (lower) and back (higher) neckline 

More lines :) I made my armholes and shoulders larger than my original markings, because I was cutting a yoke out of this bodice, which meant that I needed room for its seam allowances. 

Speaking of the yoke, I used this measuring tape as a sort of compass to make the yoke the right distance from the neckline.

I cut the back neckline and the armhole out. I opted to cut the armhole a little differently than I had drawn. 

I also drew a line for the bottom of my bodice, but I didn't end up cutting it at all! I had planned to cut it before I attached the skirt after sewing the bodice, so I could make sure that the bodice was the length I wanted it to be. But I left it with a low-waist at the end.

Cutting my front neckline

I decided to make my neckline a little bigger

The yoke

For the yoke lining, I salvaged some muslin from my sewing scraps. 

I had to do the yoke lining in 2 pieces, but it turned out fine. I made sure to leave seam allowances for the connecting seams so the lining would still fit my yoke once its pieces were sewn together.

I sewed the lining to the yoke, (with the yoke on the right side of the fabric) and snipped into the seam allowance. This is to make the curves of a neckline lie flat and smooth when you flip a lining or facing to the inside.

Now it was time to sew the yoke to the bodice.

I sewed an arc of lace to the main piece of the bodice first, and then added the yoke. This way, my lace could not move around while I sewed the yoke and bodice together, and I used that first seam as a guide for where to sew my yoke on. My lace didn't get completely enclosed in a seam this way :)

Then I sewed the back of the bodice to the back of the yoke...

I top-stitched above my lace, folding the seam behind it upwards so that my lace would lie down and not up.

I sewed the side seams together.

Well, that'll be all for this post. Stay tuned for more of the process!

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey