Pokemon Dress Part 3 Video Transcript 3
Step 13
Moving right along here, now at step 13. For step 13 all you’re going to be doing is turning your straps like this. So your strap whenever you sewed it together is like this and you should’ve pressed the seam open already. So now you’re just going to be folding that in half. Ok, and then they don’t have you pin this, but I think it’s easier to work with when you pin it at least a little bit. So I would recommend that you just put it in at least like 4 pins. Otherwise it all opens out like that and I just think it’s more difficult to work with when it’s like that. Alright one more on the other side and then we’ll be good to go.
Step 14
Let’s move on to step 14, I will briefly show you because I’ve done one already. Here’s what we’re aiming for. Here’s my shoulder seam and you’re just taking this piece and sewing it into the seam that you’re also going to be gathering on the inside. So looks fairly simple, it’s just a tiny bit tricker than that. What you’ll want to note, this is how I did mine. Just to double check that everything was correct before I started. Because if you have to take stitches out from something you’ve gathered, it is really, supremely not fun. So we want to make sure that when we stitch it, we stitch it the right way the first time.
How the armhole and sleeve markings work
So take your front piece. This is my bodice upper front, and I laid it on top of my bodice back. Just to see how the shoulder seams are. You have two of these armhole bindings, and I already used the other one on the other side. But you can see whenever you lay your armhole binding next to your straps here, that the square is going to be matched to the front piece and then your circle is going to match your seam up here because remember the seam is shorter now. So it looks longer but you’ve actually sewn this in already. So the circle matches the top seam, and then your last circle at the end of this piece will be on the back piece. So with that in mind, you’re going to take one of these straps and mark it on the outside to match those points. So you should have a square and a circle at the top, and this you’ll actually have to take your strap and flip it over to get that marking.
So go ahead and do that now if you haven’t done that. Just make sure when you do it that the seam of your armhole binding is at the lower end and the circle is the top. So if you match up your armhole binding to the circle here that will tell you where you’re other pieces need to go.
Marking on the right side of the fabric
So this one I need to mark because obviously when I cut this out before I marked the wrong side of the fabric which is what you always do when you cut but when you have pieces like this you should to mark the exterior. Normally you would not want to do that, but when you’re doing armhole bindings you of course need to do that. so I’m going to mark mine and then I’ll show you how to attach that. Just make sure and double check that you have all of these markings correct before you start gathering and do this permanent stitch. Alright now that I have everything marked I’m going to go through and start pining my binding to my actual top piece here.
Attaching the armhole binding with pins
The first thing I’m going to do is match up my seam, both of my seams on both pieces. Then I have a square here that needs to be matched to the square on the inside here. Then I have a large circle here at the top that needs to be matched to this top seam. Now I’m going to flip this out because I think it’s easier to do from this side. Because this is where all of the gathers are. I’m going to start gathering this in. You’ll also want to make sure as you’re pinning this, that the side seam is open. So make sure your side seam is open like that. So I know that I have to do, from the previous piece that I did. Hold on, a piece is trying to come loose here. I know that I have to do more gathering in the front piece than the back from the other one that I already did on the other side. So I’m just going to start on this side.
How to gather the top stitches
So this is why you wanted to keep your basting stitches free because you need to be able to gather these. If you had sewn all of them closed they would now be very hard to gather. So go ahead and find your gathering threads. Here’s one. It looks like my other one might need to get pulled out just one more. There we go. So you’re going to take those two threads, just like we did on some of the previous gathers. And your just going to pull on those gently to start fitting in the fabric. Ok that’s looking pretty good for this end. So I’ll go ahead and just put in another pin right next to these threads, and then wrap those around the needle here, or the pin to hold them in place. That looks pretty good. Then I’m going to go to the other side, and grab the two top thread there, and do the same thing. Just gently pulling that fabric in until it fits the piece beneath. Almost there. There we go, that is good. Put in another pin here, and then take those threads and wrap them around the pin to anchor them in place.
Cleaning up gathers before stitching
Now that that’s done I’m just going to make this more attractive. Right now I have gathers all over the place. You just want to pull them around, and spread them out evenly. That looks pretty decent. Then of course you can pull a little bit just to kind of straighten them out so that they look a little bit more attractive. Lovely. Let’s pin it in place. Alright and then once you’ve pinned that in place, I would also recommend that you just flip it over to the other side. Just make sure that you got both of these armhole bindings. If you’re nervous about the armhole bindings you can also baste those, if you feel more comfortable working with a basted piece. That will help them from moving around on you so much.
Now for the other side we’re going to do the same thing. I’m just going to put in one more pin down here. It looks like it needs it. Then find your threads. Then just start gathering. This is the back piece so keep in mind that it doesn’t need as much gathering. So I’m just going to wrap those really quickly. All set there. Looks like it could use just a little bit more. So now I’m going to do this side. Same thing, find your threads. This one’s being stubborn on me. There we go. Ok I that’s all it’s going to take on this one since it doesn’t need that much. Yeah, it can actually come out a bit. That looks good. Let me wrap this, and then reposition those gathers so that they look nice and clean. Pull up and down on it and then start pinning it in place once you’re happy with how your gathers look.
Basting your gathering stitches
Finally, after we finish this, finally finally. Gathering always takes awhile. We are going to baste it with the sewing machine. Now you don’t have to baste yours, you can just go ahead and stitch it. Anytime you’re working with gathers I would recommend that you baste it first. Just because if you accidentally grab something you’re not supposed to it’s so much easier to fix. I would also recommend that you remove this. I’ve yet to see a sewing machine where you couldn’t take that off. It’s just a lot easier when you’re working with an armhole to fit it around this part of the machine. Now keep in mind that your seam needs to be opened, which is why I’m going to start here. I’m just going to go ahead and start with making this seam flat. There we go. Baste that part first. Using my basting stitch, my long stitch. Then I also want this bodice piece to be flat so let me move that. Make sure to pull your gathers anywhere where they don’t look attractive, or where they look like they’re going to go sideways. It doesn’t hurt to feel underneath too to make sure that your armhole binding stays flat. Feel underneath make sure that nothings twisting.
Check your basting before permanently stitching
So take it out and check it for wonkiness. Remove all of your pins first. Flip it out. Look for the wonkiness. Check both sides of your seam. Ok so this side looks good. Now flip it out, look at the right side. Make sure nothing is weirdly folded or looks strange. I’m going to show you one. So here’s one. If I can get it close enough. See just that tiny little grab there? We don’t want that. Yes, I see. I’m just going to take that basting out right there, in that one spot. I’m going to run that through again because I really want this to be as close to perfect as possible whenever I’m done with it. Ok, let’s just run that through one more time. Now let’s look at it again. Lovely, totally worth fixing. Ok so now that this looks good, and the other side looks good, I’m going to switch this to a permanent stitch.
Finish with a permanent stitch
I’m going to stitch this again, starting at my top seam just so that I know where I started. When I sew this permanently, I’m going to try to encase all of that basting because I don’t want to remove that by hand. It will take up time and it’s annoying. So stitch, do a little back stitch. Then carefully, always feel on the bottom and feel if your folding something weirdly or grabbing pieces you’re not supposed too. The more you sew and you work with fabrics, the more you’ll be able to tell if your sewing through something that’s a thickness that’s not right. I don’t know how else to describe that. It’s just something that you learn after you’ve been sewing for so long. You start to be able to feel immediately if something’s not right and it will save you a lot of time. But there’s no fast way to learn that. You just have to keep sewing until you magically get that skill. My grandma used to talk about that when I was younger, and then one day I could just do it all the sudden. Alright now we’ve reached the top seam so stitch, do a back stitch, and that side is good.
Repeat the process and trim excess material
I’m going to do the same thing on the other side. And then let me check here because I think they want us to stitch one more time. Baste, stitch, oh, nope you don’t have to stitch again. So once you have permanently stitched both of these, you’re just going to take your scissors, and you’re going to trim it down to about 1/4 th. You’re going to trim up more than half this extra fabric that’s in here. It really should leave just a little bit of fabric. The reason for that is because whenever you finish with the armhole binding, you’re going to be turning this to the inside. If you have all of that fabric in there, there’s no way that you can turn this. So really do trim it pretty close to the edge here. As close as you feel comfortable with without hurting your stitching. So do your trimming and then come back and join me again.
Slip stitch the sleeve binding step 15
The next part that we need to do is a slipstitch for the sleeve. I’ve already done most of this one, and I finished the other one. This is the armhole binding that you just sewed into the bodice and then you gathered all of that in. What I did after I trimmed everything out, was I just folded that armhole binding to the inside. Then you tuck in your selvedges there, or unfinished bits, whatever you want to call it. You’re jut going to do a slip stitch to close that up. So you’ll just grab a little bit of your bodice fabric. Just a tiny bit, like that and then you just slip stitch it through the armhole binding. And you’re going to do that through the whole piece. So one more time. Just grab a little bit of thread from the fabric, and then put the needle through your armhole binding, and that’s your slipstitch. Little bit of thread, put it through the armhole binding. Let’s try that again. Pull it through. So I just finished up that binding for that entire sleeve now. So I’m just going to anchor it in my stitch here. Then I’m just going to do a double knot to hold it in place. Then once I’ve done the double knot, to make the finish a little prettier, I will take the needle close to where I just stitched. Put it through the armhole binding, let it going through a little bit and then trim off the end. Let’s move on to the next step.
Step 16 bodice interfacing
Now that we’ve finished step 15 we’re now moving on to step 16 and for that we are going to be cutting some interfacing pieces. I’m going to tell that since we have to cut interfacing also for step 17, I’m just going to be cutting both of those now. So for the first one, which is for the top, we need two different pieces. They both need to be 1 inch wide and 10 inches long. This is my interfacing, and I have the glue side down just because the fabric side is easier to draw on. I have a good piece down here that basically already measures 2 inches. So I’m just going to mark that because once this is done, I’ll just cut it in half and that will be both of my pieces. So two inches here at the top, I’ll just mark that. Then I’m going to go 10 inches down and just mark that, and then mark two inches again. There we go. So it doesn’t need to be fancy or absolutely perfect. It’s just going to be helping to hold your zipper in, and if you need to draw this line out of course you can. I’d just rather freehand it. No one’s going to see it, it’s going to be on the inside and it’s just going to help your garment be a bit stronger. Alright so there’s one. Then I’m just going to cut down the middle. That will work for my top. So I’ll set those aside with my top piece over here.
Step 17 skirt interfacing
The next two that we need to do are going to be for the skirt. Piece 7 of the skirt. So if you look back at your pattern again, and you go to step 17, you’re going to be cutting two more pieces of fusible interfacing and these are going to be one inch by seven inches. I think I’ll use this section. Grab my pencil. I’ll just go to the corner here to mark this really quickly. Two inches because I’m going to cut it in half just like I did the last one. I’ll line it up here just to make sure that it’s straight. Then 7 inches down from that would be here. Alright now we can cut this out. It’s hard to see my pencil marking here. I can’t find it now because it’s grey, hold on. There, I did not make it dark enough. It’s hard to see. I’ll just cut it while I’m looking at it. There we go. I’ll keep this as spare interfacing for some similar things. Then just cut this down the middle.
Interface all pieces at once
Alright and I’m going to be doing all of these interfacings at the same time. So your top, your bodice piece, you’re going to go to the inside, and your back pieces will be here. That is where you are going to be adding your interfacing. Like this. Now I’m not going to show you how to install the interfacing, there are plenty of videos on how to install interfacing if you need to look that up. I’m just going to go ahead and put mine in, but I will show you. This is where it goes on the bodice, and it does go to the inside. Of course you want the glue side down when you start. For your skirt piece 7, you’ll want to go to the wrong side of the fabric. Find the side that has the dots on it that you should’ve marked when you were cutting out the pattern. That is where your other interfacing pieces are going to go. So the other two pieces that you cut are going to be installed like this on both of those pieces. So go ahead and interface all 4 of those pieces, and then come back and join me again. We’re now ready to start putting together our skirt pieces.
Step 18 building the skirt
So after you finish your interfacing, you’ll be at step 18 which requires piece 7. Just to show you quickly, this is what piece seven looks like. Basically a gigantic rectangle, and you should have these markings. One at the top which is going to be for your gathering and one here which will eventually be for your zipper. So I have both of my piece sevens, and they have the interfacing. I’m just going to put those together, right sides together. Then if your interfacing happens to cover your dot you can use your pattern to remark it if you need too. I can see mine right here, so I’m good to go. I’m just going to put in a few pins, match up my notches here, and I won’t pin this a whole lot. Since it’s cotton it’s not going to move around on me that much. I’ll probably just put in two down here. Alright, and now since I would like to actually sit down at the machine and stitch this all at once, I’m going to go ahead and attach my next piece too.
Pin all skirt pieces and sew them together
So leaving that section pinned, I’m going to take my right side of either one of those. It doesn’t matter which one you grab, and I’m going to move on to step 19. I’m going to be adding piece 8 to this. Here’s my piece 8, basically the other piece that looks like another gigantic rectangle. We’re just going to do the same thing. Putting our right sides together, so open this out, right sides together, and then I’m going to pin those together as well. I’ll match the top first, and then I’ll match my notch. Then just put in a few other stray pins down here just to kind of keep things somewhat in place. That looks pretty good. Then I’m going to do the other side as well. So let me grab both of these that I already pinned. I’m just going to flip this, and then the same thing over here. So right sides together, and make sure you didn’t flip anything weirdly. I’ll match up my top section first. Alright, then the notch, and then one or two down here in the bottom. Now once everything is pinned I can just sit at the machine and sew all of these in one go, which is my personal preference when I’m working on skirts.
Leave a zipper opening in the skirt back
Let me get my sewing machine set up here, and I’ll let you watch me stitch those. Alright, I’m ready to start stitching. This is the first section you’re supposed to do I believe. This is the piece seven. So where your zipper’s going to be, you’re just going to start at that dot that you made at 5/8, and you’ll just do a permanent stitch there. Back stitch, then just make your way down to the end. Do a back stitch at the end, and that piece is done. Now I want to find the next section that we pinned together. It doesn’t matter which one you do. This time starting from the top, you’ll do the same thing. Line it up at 5/8’s, stitch, back stitch, and then follow on down the seam there. Back stitch at the end, and that one’s done too, and now we have one more. Last one. Same thing, stitch, back stitch, and finish up the seam. Back stitch at the end. Before we do our next gathering stitches, you should go to your ironing board and press all of these seams open.
Press the skirt seams open
So press all three of those seams open like this. Make sure when you’re pressing the interfacing, that you don’t hold the iron on it too much because sometimes it will make your interfacing buckle if it starts to melt again without the water. If you’re not doing it the correct way, so don’t press too hard on the interfacing. Press all those seams open, and then come back.
Skirt gathering stitches
Now that our skirt is put together, we just want to start doing our gathering stitches. So you should have two dots at the back where you did the interfacing. Mine is right here. You’re going to start your gathering stitch there. So just make sure that you have your stitch width at the longest that you can use. For me that’s 5, and then also make sure that you have threads in the back so that you have something pull on later once you finish this. Then start your stitch. So this is just going to be a very long basted gathering stitch around this entire skirt piece. You want to make sure when you get to the seams that they are open. Here’s another seam. Make sure that it’s pressed open. Then as you get to the end here, you’re going to want to make sure that you stop at the dot again. So don’t go past the dot. Alright, so there’s mine. So that’s one, now we need to do another stitch. Same thing, same exact settings, very close to that one, on the inside of the seam. If you remember earlier when I said the inside of the seam, it means closer this way. So right next to that one that you just did, just about a fourth away from that, you’re going to do another stitch, the exact same way. Make sure that you stop at the dot again. Alright. That
finishes my gathering stitch.
Gathering the skirt into the bodice
Ok here are my gathers. I basically put the right side of the bottom of the bodice that we finished working on to the inside of the skirt and then what you’ll want to do is match up your edges. So pin the edges together. Then match up your seams, and pin your seams together. One here and one here and then you have two notches in the front that need to be pinned together. Once you’ve pinned all of that you’re going to do just your regular gathered stitch like we’ve done on the bodice part. So I left one side here just to show you. so I just pulled on all of these until everything fit into the section that it needs to be pinned in. Then after that you’re just going to adjust your gathers into a way that you like. Make sure it looks pretty evenly spaced, and then just pin that down. The skirt, pinning the skirt to the bodice and doing the gathers takes a little bit more time just because the gathers are longer and the pieces are bigger, but the actual spacing of the gathers I feel like is much easier because it’s more gathered than the top. So when you have this much fabric that you’re gathering into a section, you don’t have to work so hard to make it look good. It’s just naturally evenly spaced. So I actually think that this gathering is easier than the bodice work that we did earlier.
Attaching the bodice to the skirt
Alright, and then once you have that done, and you have everything pinned. You can use a few or as many pins as you want. I do recommend quite a few pins when you’re working on gathers because they move around a lot. We’re ready to stitch this. So I’m going to go ahead and do a permanent stitch. If you haven’t done a lot of gathers I would recommend that you do a basting first I am pretty comfortable with just going ahead and doing a permanent stitch on this. So that is what I am going to do.
Don’t sew in the flaps
Another thing to note on the inside where you have those flaps on the front of the bodice, make sure that you don’t catch those inside this seam. That’s very important. So do not catch those when you are stitching this. I have to keep an eye on my thread here because I’m starting to run out of thread. So if you have been sewing along with me here you might want to check your thread now too. This project uses quite a bit.
Permanently stitching the skirt and bodice together
So doing a regular 5/8 seam, and then when I get to my basting stitch over here I’m going to try to sew slightly to the left here of my basting because I don’t want to have the basting show when I’m done. So I’m just trying to make sure that that basting also doesn’t show. And keep feeling underneath this as you stitch it just to make sure that you’re not grabbing anything that you’re not supposed to be. Alright when you get to the seams make sure that both your seams are open. I have a little bit of a wonky piece there, so I just want to make that pretty. Much better. Alright we’re coming up to another seam here so check. See how that one wants to pop up? Make sure that all the seams are pressed open. It really will change the look of your dress afterwards if you don’t have your seams open. It also just doesn’t feel good when you’re wearing your garment and you too much thickness in one area. So you want to avoid that. I think I’m barely going to get this done before I’m out of thread. Lucky, lucky me. Alright I’m finishing up here at the end. Doing a good back stitch. Alright I am definitely going to have to change my thread out. I’m so thankful that I got done with that bit though.
Turn the seam out and check for mistakes
Now you just want to flip it out, and do a check to make sure that you haven’t sewn through those flaps. Yay! That is perfect. Then just check your seam for any wonkiness. This side is good. Let me check the other one. This side is also good. Now we finally have something that actually looks like a dress.
