A Dress for Ireland - Part 3 - Cutting and Sewing

7:50 PM AirplaneFoodCritic 0 Comments

I only had just under 5 yards of the fabric. Could I find a way to make the dress still??

When last we met, I had everything I needed to start my coat dress for the wedding in Ireland except I had about 2 yards less of the main fabric than I wanted and over 1 yard less than required to make the dress according to the pattern. I love this fabric so much that I was determined to make it work. I knew I could not use the layout guidelines as shown in the pattern like you see in the photo above. I had to get tricky. Luckily there were some tweaks I could make to save some fabric yardage. I decided to make some black trim and details. I bought yet another fabric that is soft and very black. I thought about doing black velvet but the only velvet I could find was shiny and I was looking for black black black. I chose a nice fabric from the suit wool section.

Extreme up close of the black trim fabric I used.

The way the pattern was made they have you cut out 4 front panels. There are two left panels and two right panels. You are meant to sew them together so the collar folds over and you see the same fabric on the inside and outside of the collar. I used the black fabric as the two inside panels so when you turn the collar out, it is black. I also cut the pocket panels out so they were half lining and half fabric instead of all fabric. This way I save fabric and I get to feel the silk when I put my hands in my pockets. Also, if the dress turned out shorter than I wanted, I was ready to add a few inches to the whole bottom in the black.

With all these changes in place I cut out all the fabric with enough to cut out an extra inch on the bottom! Hooray for high hopes and things working out. I cut all the fabric, lining and interlining out. The fabric needed serging big time since it frayed easily. I decided to kill to birds by just serging the muslin interlining to the fabric instead of basting them together like the pattern called for.

I ripped out all those serged stitches and it left a holy mess of loose threads and frayed edges.

The first snag I hit was just a mistake on my part. I serged the wrong side on one of the panels so that I ended up with two of the exact same pieces. This would have been easy to fix if the fabric wasn't so easily frayed but it ended up being a delicate operation. I had to seam rip very carefully all the way around and of course it was one of the front panels. I made a huge mess but it came out mostly together.

I had to remove the threads before I re-serged the fabric or it would show as sloppy in the finished product.

I had threads everywhere after ripping out all the serged seams. I used a lint roller to clean up all the little threads that were still stuck in the fabric and all the loose threads as well. This is a great little trick if you don't know about it.

A lint roller can pull out all those loose threads for you so you don't have to pick them with your fingers.

After I rolled out the threads I managed to serge the fabrics together without losing too much in the size. I had to cut some of the frayed edges off or the dress risked coming apart after much use. Once this problem was solved I continued along with little issue...until I put the sleeves on.

The sleeves were another area I used to save fabric length by adding black cuffs instead of plain fabric. Somehow, and I am still not entirely sure where I measured so wrong, I messed up my measurements of the cuffs and ended up with sleeves fit for Slender Man.

Arms that go forever and ever.....

I got frustrated at this point because I was in a bit of a hurry to use the sewing room at the college before spring break and Romeo & Juliet began. So I roughly measured and then chopped the sleeves off. I know, terrible idea. It worked out....okkkkkk....but not ideal. I sewed on new black cuffs, folded them in and folded them out like the pattern told me to. I sewed the fabric on with the inside facing out due to further terrible calculations. It is not noticeable thank the cosmos but I know it's there and it bugs me a little bit. That's what you get for rushing things.

The longest sleeves in the world? Possibly.

You can see in the photo above that I sewed both cuffs on differently. The one on the left I sewed on the outside and the one on the right I sewed on the inside. I chose to not fix it for two reasons. One, I would never see the point of stitching because of the way the pattern has me folding this way and that way and this way again. Two because I was about to toss the whole dress out the window (luckily the shop does not have windows!).

I folded and refolded the cuffs as instructed until I had the basic length of black I was looking for.

I did a finishing stitch on the fold of the cuff to give it a sharp edge. When the dress was complete I also tacked the folded cuff down so it didn't every come unfolded to reveal my huge mistakes and blunders. Forever hidden...except for this blog of course.

You can see the finishing stitch I put on the end of the cuff here.

Once you have basically made the entire dress out of the fabric you get to make the whole dress AGAIN. Only this time out of the lining. This time around was much easier since I had made all the mistakes I was going to make the first time around.

Here is me putting together the two most difficult parts of the dress: the neck seam. I thought this photo would help illustrate it to make it easier for the next person but looking at this, I was wrong.

The part of the dress that was the most difficult to put together...to read on the pattern....for me was the neck seam. I could get all the sides and panels together but the neck seam was a little wonky looking in the pattern. I figured it out by knowing that I had to put right sides together and I also had to line up the seams. Once I knew those two things had to happen, the rest fell into place...no matter who weird it looked at first.

Once the two whole parts of the dress are made it was not too difficult to just sew them together. And boom! I had a dress. Next, I will add buttons, make adjustments and add trim.