Pokemon Dress Part 1 Video Transcript 1
Welcome back to another episode with the Life kawaii. Today I have my new sewing project which is this very adorable and kawaii Pikachu dress. So for this sew along I will be using Butterick patterns 6322 and I’m using a fantastic kawaii Pikachu fabric. And if you’re interested in the fabric, I linked it below. This sew along is probably going to be about three videos long, because it took me about three days to complete the project in total. We will cover doing all the gathering stitches, putting in the grommets, doing the hem by hand, and then also doing all this handwork around the armhole and also the neck. Then we also have in the back, our zipper to install. So these are all the things that I will cover in the sew along. So the Pikachu dress takes about three days to complete in total, and that’s if you do all the hand stitching that I’m going to show you. I would recommend the hand stitching because that is part of the reason it is so adorable, and if any of you are interested in purchasing the Pikachu dress, I am selling it. Feel free to message me, and I’ve also listed the price below in the box if anyone wants to look. So this dress is for sale, but if you want to make your own, gather all of your things. Your fabric, your scissors, your thread, your grommets, your suede tie, if you want to do it I did; and let’s start this sew along. Here we go.
Step 1 gathering the bodice front
Step one I’m just going to jump right in here. We are going to be gathering our upper bodice front. So you’ll want to find the piece that says bodice upper front. You’re going to see that it has all these different markings on it that you should have made. One here, one up here, and one at the side here, and a small one right there in the middle. We are just going to be basting in between all of those sections. So this is what piece one looks like. It’s cut on the fold, and then your machine stitch, should be set at its longest width. I have mine here on five, and I’m going to start with the inside of the neckline here. So just a little bit in from 5/8 with that long stitch, and I’m going to stitch the whole piece. So just in case any of you are new to my sew alongs I always like to do my basting or gathering stitches a little bit slightly in from the exact seam allowance that they give you. That’s just because I don’t want the threads to show once I finished the garment. So if I move in that seam just a tiny bit, it’ll all be hidden once I finish. Okay there’s one stitch done. Make sure that you leave your threads long enough that you can pull them later. If you chop them too close, they’re harder to work with.
The second bodice basting
Now I’m going to do a second basting, another stitch very close to that. So right here I’m going to move in just slightly, and then stitch again. This one is just a little bit more inwards. That just makes your gathering stitch a lot easier to do. It also makes it neater. It looks more clean whenever you have two lines of basting than one. There we go, to the end. Once again making sure that I leave thread long enough that I’ll be able to actually pull on it. So that finishes that part. Now we need to do the exterior here, so this little sleeve section gets done by itself. We’re going to do the same thing, using that same stitch, slightly in from 5/8. Careful as you around the corner there, leaving enough thread to pull on it, and then doing that next basting just slightly inwards from the one you just did. Now let’s do the other side of that. So same thing with our side one more time, slightly in.
Sewing in my apartment
You guys I’m sorry about all the noise that you’re going to hear in the background. My heat in my apartment is crazy intense, so even in winter I tend to leave the window open. Right now, since it’s Halloween night, you can imagine in New York City what is down there on the street. Lots and lots of craziness. Ok the last basting we have to do to finish step one, is the bottom now. So this big long stretch of the bottom we’re going to do that one. I can hear a child screaming because it’s upset about it’s candy already. My Halloween is very, or was very different for me, as a kid. Just to talk while I’m doing this. Since I grew up in Kentucky, we just went to people’s houses, and it was safe to to get candy from people, and it wasn’t dangerous like it is now. I don’t even know what they do now, since I haven’t obviously been trick-or-treating in forever. In New York all of the kids go trick-or-treating either at their school where they set up something beforehand where the parents will bring the kids in and they’ll just go around like at little kiosks and pick up candy and play games and things like that. Or they’ll go into businesses. So since my apartment is located on the very long strip of a Broadway, there are plenty of businesses in this section, so I’ve been watching the kids go in and out of the businesses across the street, outside of my window all night. The Claire’s down the street is giving out pretty good candy. I think they were giving out some full-size candy bars.
Finishing step 1
One more, one more of those long stitches, and we’ll be done with step one. I just sewed through a Pikachu face. Sorry Pikachu, I’m going to do it again. It pains me a little bit every time. Alright finally rounding the end here. Yay, okay now you can just set that piece aside for a little bit. Set that there and that finishes step one. Now let me go grab what’s next, which is going to be our piece two, and we’ll do the stay stitching for that. Alright moving right along here.
Step 2 markings and stay stitching
We are now at number two. Number two says to stay stitch the mid-drift front, so just find your piece – so here’s piece two mid-drift front and it looks like this because you should have cut it on the fold and then you just need to make sure because you’ll need them in a minute that you marked everything here. So you should have a square and a circle, and another circle that’s a little bigger for a total of one, two, three, four, five, six markings. Now we’re just going to do a stay stitch, which is a permanent stitch. So I’m just resetting my machine because I still had the basting stitch on, and I’m just going to run that through at 5/8. And back stitching again, all right and that is done. This fabric is so cute.
Sew the two pieces together
So the next thing that we’re going to be doing, is attaching both of those pieces that we just worked on. So they’re going to be right sides together whenever you sew it. I guess I’ll show you really quick, this is going to be that front gathered part. So you’re going to be sewing it together like this eventually. But all of this has to get gathered into this seam. So you’ll want to go ahead, and then pin up your sides. So you’re just going to pin these together. Oh I need my pins, hold on. Okay let’s try this again, pinning together those corners. I always start from the outside and work my way in. I would recommend that you put a pin in at the end, and then also another one at the other end, before you start matching your your dots and things.
Match up all of the markings
All right. Now you can start matching things up, and it takes me a minute to find my dots on this fabric. Okay here’s one, and here’s my other one. I’m just matching those up, and then I should have another one here. There we go and find the matching one on the other piece of fabric. So hard to see on here. Then I have another one over here. I thought white chalk would be easiest to see on this. I kind of wish I’d done it in like a green or something now. It’s harder to see that I thought it would be. Okay there’s one more, and there should be one more in here. Oh so hard to see. Oh lovely, lovely Halloween New York noises. Okay that one we’re going to have to wait til that sound goes away. I’m going to go ahead and apologize ahead of time, that I had to go ahead and do most of this, but if I had waited for that car alarm to go off before continuing, I would have been sitting here for at least two hours.
Learning to gather sewing threads
So I went ahead and pinned most of it, and I’m just going to show you here at the ends briefly, what you’re going to be doing. Just in case any of you haven’t done this before. Now I do have four threads over here and that’s because I have of course bastings on all sides. So just make sure that you grab the right threads. So these are the two that I need. Those are the two threads on the top here, and we’re just going to pin the end here. You want to pin close to where the threads actually come out of the the fabric here, and you’ll see why when you start to pull it because it’s just easier. So let me pull a little bit of this out, just so you can see it. Okay so when you pull your top two threads, just those top two, you’ll see your fabric continue to bunch like this. You just want to pull it taunt enough, that it fills up the space that you have between your two pins.
Pulling the threads to fit the piece
So this is a section that I had pinned. I have two dots here, and then this is my seam, So I know that I need to fit that in between there, so I just pull until I have the same length on both pieces. So now these fit together, and then I’m going to take my two threads, and just wrap them around the needle. That’s just to hold them in place until I stitch. Now you don’t want to just stitch that like that, you want to fit it through. So fit your gathers, just pull on them gently. Then another thing I like to do sometimes, is hold the top like this, just because I think it makes a prettier seam, and then take your fabric and just kind of pull it down like that. I think it makes a nicer seam when you’re done. It kind of helps get out these little bunches. Okay so once you have that pretty much spread throughout the entire section there, you’ll want to pin that down. You can use a few pins, or a lot of pins if you like. I like to use a lot of pins whenever I’m doing gathers because I just think it makes it a lot easier to stitch.
Sewing in my New York apartment
Argh, more sirens. I don’t know if you guys can hear those are not. Halloween in New York. This is why I don’t tend to do much on Halloween night in New York because people become insane. All I’ve heard since I got home and started sewing are sirens. Okay we’re all pinned.
Permanently stitching after the gathers are pinned
Now we’re going to sew that together in a 5/8 seam. Here we go. Make sure you don’t have a basting stitch on here, you just need your regular stitch. We’re just going to start at 5/8 and stitch that all together. Do a back stitch. When you’re stitching this, if you can, try to aim so that you’re hiding your basting stitches on the inside, because you don’t want to have to go through later and try to cut those out. You can and it’s easy enough to do, but it’s tedious so you want to try to avoid that if you can.
Keep the gathers straight
Then I would also recommend, as you’re going through and stitching this down. If you find an area where there are a lot of puckers, or the fabric isn’t laying straight, you’ll want to try to pull that so it’s straight. So just because you have this pinned, and you have the gathers spread out as you want them, doesn’t mean that the fabric will all of a sudden not fold over and you don’t want that look. You want your gathers to still be perky and straight. So right here in the middle section that’s where the gathers are the thickest just because of the way they worked the pattern. So that’s a good place to kind of just gently pull on this side of the fabric, just to make sure that it laying nicely. Okay see this here? This is a prime example of where my fabrics trying to lay funky. So I’m just going to gently pull that straight, and then sew it like that, so it looks nicer when it’s done. All right we’re rounding the end here. Almost there. Almost over. Make sure your last pin that’s holding your threads, if you wrapped your threads like I did, make sure to sew over that pin if you can before you take the pin out. Otherwise if the threads come loose and move around all of a sudden, your top piece won’t match with the bottom piece, and that’s just a pickle to deal with. Then do a back stitch. Okay so let me show you what this looks like.
Finishing the bodice basic layout
Tada! It’s a sort of bodice. Obviously we still have to do more work on it, but you get the idea. So the next thing that we’ll need to dos is actually stitch again through here. Then we’re going to trim it out. So I’m not going to show that part. What you’ll need to do is just stitch 1/4 in the seam allowance here, next to that stitch that you already did, and then you’re just going to trim all of that out. Moving right along here.
Step 4 finish your interfaced sections
We’re now at step four now. I’m just going to show you this. This is both of my interfaced pieces. I’ve already done this. I’m not going to cover attaching the interfacing. If you need that, there are so many videos on YouTube that you can watch on how to apply your interfacing. If you do have questions, you can post them below, and I’ll answer them as soon as I see them. So moving on from step four, you should have your interfacing already completed, and then you’re going to be attaching your extra pieces. So this is your piece three. You should have four of those. So two of those get interfaced and then you should have two other pieces that are not interfaced.
Make interfaced and non-interfaced pieces
You’re going to be putting those right sides together, so just match up right sides. Okay set that aside, and then match up the right sides of your other piece as well. Okay and then we’re going to be stitching these together at the top here, down the side, and then along the bottom. I’m just going to roughly pin that. Pin the edges, and then I’ll do one here in the middle, then pin the edges here as well. Then also do one pin in the middle of both of those sections too. Just to help keep things from wiggling around. Actually I think I’ll use two here. Okay so now we’re just going to stitch that using a regular 5/8 inch stitch. Then I’m going to back stitch a little bit at my corners.
Make the corners strong with reinforcement
Anytime I have a piece I’m going to be eventually turning out, I always like to reinforce the corners. Okay, reinforce that corner. Reinforce this little part. I’m going to try to keep everything at five-eighths. This one needs to go down a little bit more. Perfect, five-eighths. Backstitch at the end here. Okay so there’s one. I’ll set that one aside. Now I’ll pin the next one. I’m just going to do the same thing that I did on the other piece. Put my edges together first. I’ll put one pin in the middle, and just keep doing that for that whole seam that needs to be stitched. I’m usually a big fan of using a whole bunch of pins, but whenever I’m working with pieces that are interfaced, they’re so great because they hardly move. Most fabrics they’ll stay pretty much in place. So I know that I don’t need to pin it too much. It’s very easy to work with an interfaced piece. All right.
Sewing the interfaced sections to uninterfaced sections
Stitching this one, the same exact way, 5/8, back stitching. Then when I get to the end here, I’ll reinforce all of it. Reinforce this one too. Now I’m just finishing up the rest of that seam and then back. Okay so let’s see what else we need to do with these pieces. Right sides together, yes we did that. Having it stitched, yes we did that.
Trim away access fabric
Okay now it just wants us to trim them. So now we’re just going to trim these down. So grab your scissors, and you’re going to trim at least half of this out. I always like to aim for half on the outside of the seam that you made. At your seam, cut out at least half of this all the way around. When you get to the corners here, you’ll want to also cut sideways at an angle. I’ll show you one of mine, what it looks like once I finished it. Cutting it sideways at the edge here just means that it will flip out better. Let me trim mine, and I’ll show you what mine looks like right before I flip them. Here’s an example of what mine looks like. So you can see they’re nicely trimmed out. It takes away a lot of the bulk weight of the piece. Then the edges here I’ve made them curved. You can also just clip them straight if you want, but I think curved looks nicer.
Why round the corners?
Then the reason that you do that is because the next step in step six, you need to flip them out, and it just makes the corners look nicer when you trim them out like that. There we go. Nice little point, and I finally get to see my adorable Pikachu’s. If you want to make super nice points, sometimes I take out my crochet needles, the thicker ones of course not the tiny ones you don’t want to puncture your fabric. I’ll just take a crochet needle and put it up in there, and that will also make a really nice point. Okay so here’s one. It’s very pretty. Let me flip the other one. Once we get these flipped out, we’re just going to be basting our loose edges. Make sure before you do your basting, that you’re really happy with how your points look. Because once it’s basted, forever hold your piece. You cannot get back into the seam once it’s basted closed and it’s ready to be sewn in the next step. Okay I’m pretty happy with this.
Press it before basting the edges closed
Now before I baste these, I’m just going to make sure to press the seam flat as best as I can and that’s because I don’t want to have a weird fold that shows up on either side of the fabric. Of course start with your edges, always start with the edges, so just make sure that that fold is as flat as possible. Pin those down, then you’ll just fit in the rest of this. Okay now I’m just going to baste that. So using my long stitch, which for me is five. I am going to do the basting similar to earlier whenever I didn’t quite do it at five eighths. I want to do it a little bit on the inside because the spacing is just to hold this in place, and it’s just easier for the next seam that I do to encase all of the basting on the inside if I do it slightly in from 5-8’s. Okay and don’t worry if your basting is not perfect. It’s just to hold everything in place. So it doesn’t have to be beautiful. There’s one. I’m going to do that exact same thing for the other piece. When I was cutting this one, I was trying my best to try to keep at least two of these Pikachu’s. That finishes number six, which means we get to move on. I get to flip the paper which feels so rewarding. Yay!
Step 7 attaching the overlay to the bodice
Okay moving on to number seven with interfaced side down, pin one overlay section to each side of bodice front. Okay so that piece you did earlier, luckily for me mine is right behind me. Let me move my machine somewhere. So you have your top piece here, this is the gathered top that you did. Now we’re just going to be attaching the pieces that we just did to the front here. So since these pieces are the same, this is the same piece right? So you’re going to be attaching them like this.
Decide which side to show of your fabric
Since I am using such a kawaii cute fabric, I’m going to take some time right now to look at what I have on each piece. Because technically I could sew this like this or I could sew it like this. So usually when I am sewing things like this I like to have the interfaced section on the outside just because it’s nicer, but I think for something like this it’s more important to me to have the fabric selection that I want. So I’m just going to take a look here. I think this side looks better on this one. Hmmm tricky. If I do it this way, I almost have six Pikachu’s, the side looks really good, this sides not perfect. If I do it this way, I would rather do it like this. This one looks a little bit better. At least on this one the Pikachu still has a head. If I flip it over, I have a headless Pikachu.
Which side looks better?
I understand that this is a Halloween thing, however headless Pikachu is not my desired affect. So this is how I will be doing mine. With that done let’s do the first one. This is just going to be basted for now too. So just match up the top and then match up your bottom. Oh sorry don’t match up your bottom, match up your top, then match up your notch. Then the bottom I would recommend you just stitch this, and then when you get to the bottom here, you’re just going to back stitch the end. You can see when you’re doing this, your bodice piece is going to be longer. The reason for that, is when you attach the skirt later, you’re going to be stitching 5/8 right here. That’s going to be encased, but you still want this to move. So it should not be the same length as the piece underneath. Make sense? So just match up the top and the notch, and then I would recommend that you just freehand the rest of this. Then just backstitch here to make sure that it doesn’t move around on you.
Baste the flaps ton the bodice
So here we go, still on a basting stitch, although you could stay stitch this too. It’s not not a big deal. Alright then, if you’re doing what I’m doing, you’re free handing this just make sure everything’s lined up. All right and then I’m just going to do a tiny little back stitch here, just to help keep that in place. Now I’m going to do that exact same thing on the other side, matching up my pieces here, pinning together the top, and I want to make sure that I keep stitching in that same direction. So just make sure. It’s tempting when you’re sewing this, to sew it through like this, just so you can see the fabric. I would recommend that you try to stitch your seams, in general, in most things that you make, in the same direction. Okay and since I can’t see the bottom of this one, I am going to pin it, since it’s going be underneath. When I stitch it that way, I will know where to do my tiny little backstitch. Okay here we go five eighths from the top, and a basting stitch. Here’s my pin marking where I want to do my little my little back stitch. Keep that thick fabric in place all right.
Top gathered bodice front is completed
So now let me show you what you should have when you finish that. This is your top gathered bodice. Okay and this is the part that’s going be over your waist, below the bust. Then these are your, I might call them flaps, because if you guys have been watching my sewing things then you know that I like to call these flaps for some reason. Anything that’s flappy, I like to call a flap. So set that aside. The next thing, says we’re going to gather the upper edge of each bodice upper back section between small circles and triangles. Okay so I need to go grab my other piece. So give me a second to do that, and then we’ll continue.
Butterick 6322 How To Parts 1 – 4:
