Pokemon Dress Part 4 Video Transcript 4
Now I’m just going to go through one more time, about 1/4 away from that, and do another permanent stitch. Even though you’ve already stitched this, I still would recommend that you check to make sure that your seams are open. Always feel underneath to make sure that you’re not grabbing something because you can still mess something up. Alright, here’s another seam, make sure it’s open. That one wanted to turn on me last time, and it tried to turn again this time. Alright. Now we’re all set.
Trim excess material away
The next thing that we have to do is trim this out. Take your scissors and trim close to the second stitch, the one that we just did. You’ll want to trim close to that. Just remove all of that bulk. Because that will not feel good when you’re wearing this, I promise you. Just trim out as much as you can, and then come back and join me for the next step.
Step 22 pressing for zipper prep
So for step 22 we’re beginning the process of installing the zipper. Now I’ve already pressed mine, but I wanted to show you how I did it. On the right side of your dress, you are pressing that in 1/2 inch. So if you remember, this interfacing that we put in measures an inch wide. So if you just fold it over itself and press it, keeping the interfacing edges even, you will have a 1/2 inch piece. So here is 1/2 inch, pressed, and it just matches up with itself. For the other side, if you feel comfortable with this, you can eyeball it. The other option is you can also use a basting stitch and just baste a 5/8 stitch, and then use that as a guide to press it. Another way, and the way that I like to do, is to just use my tape measure. Measure where 5/8’s is, and I can tell from my tape measure placement, that if I just slightly overlap my interfaced side here and press it, that will be a 5/8’s inch seam. So if I take the interfacing from the outside here, and just overlap it a little bit from the inside, that gives me a 5/8 inch seam.
Press seams in the correct direction
The other thing you’ll want to be careful for whenever you’re pressing this. Make sure that your seams go in the direction they’re supposed to. My bust seam up here, where I have the gathers, that seam is pressed downward and needs to go downward. The waist seam, where we just did all of the gathering stitches, that seam points upward. Make sure when you flip this in, that you don’t have seams overlapping in opposite directions. They need to go in the same direction.
Pressed seams should slightly overlap
Once we flip that out, you’ll have your 1/2 inch pressed side here, and then your 5/8 inch pressed side here. That 5/8’s inch is going to slightly overlap, which is what you want. So this looks good so far. Let’s see what’s next. Now that we’ve finished our pressing, we can actually start to go ahead and pin in the zipper, and we’re going to pin in the right side first. So here is my right side of the dress. I gave my zipper a light pressing because it came in a package like this, and it was folded over and had a fold here that I didn’t want. So now I’m just going to start pinning this in. Make sure, I always recommend every single project, when you’re doing a zipper. Lay it flat as if it’s finished so that you can make sure that your putting all the correct seams together. I know that if I fold this over like this and I look at the zipper, it will indeed function like a zipper. It never hurts to check that every time.
Pin in the zipper
Alright, so I’m just going to line up the top here, and I’m going to pin mine very close to the zipper. Right next to it in fact. You don’t need to put in a whole bunch of pins, unless you just feel you need to. I find when I’m stitching a zipper, my fabric will want to move. It will start to almost stretch as you go down the zipper, so your pins are not going to matter that much anyways. You’re going to have to move things around. This just kind of helps to keep everything in place while you’re stitching so that you don’t accidentally stitch into something you’re not supposed to. So just keep pinning, all the way down. Tuck in your zipper to the inside. As you get to the bottom here, you’ll also want to go underneath to the inside, and pin part of the bottom in place too. Like right here, I’m going to put another pin because we have to stitch around that later. We definitely want to stitch that in the correct place right underneath the seam in there. Ok so this side is done. Now I’m going to go to the machine, and see how badly my purple thread matches or doesn’t match with this. That will be the deciding factor of whether or not I stitch this.
Stitching in the zipper at the machine
Alright, I don’t have another spool of blue thread, so I’m going to attempt this with the little bit of thread that i have left on that spool. I’m just going to start below my gathering stitches, because I don’t want to stitch over my gathering stitches. I’m using my zipper foot. Do you remember how I said earlier that things would start to move in your zipper? So here’s the perfect example. so once I sewed through that thick part there, I can already see that my zipper and my fabric are starting to not align the way that they’re pinned. I don’t want to fight that. I just want to continue to stitch that the way that the fabric is wanting to lay naturally already. So just unpin as you need to. Make sure to check underneath, and that you’re not stitching anything you’re not supposed to be. So far so good.
If your fabric moves under the zipper
There, you can see how much my fabric has moved. See that? That almost always happens to me with zippers. That’s also why a lot of sewing books will tell you when you’re sewing a zipper to always stitch from the top to the bottom. Even when it’s awkward like this. It would be easier for me to do it the other way, but because the fabric will move on you, it’s good to always stitch in the same direction. Now I just want to go a little bit below where my seam meets here again. I want to feel underneath to make sure that this is open. That this seam is open. Perfect ok.Then I’m just going to stitch a little bit below that. Ok, that’s fine. I’ll do a little backstitch there. That’s good for now because this other side, when I stitch it, is going to meet up with that. Alright. I don’t know if I have enough thread left on here to be able to do the other side, but I will try.
One zipper side should overlap
Now one thing you have to watch out for before you stitch the other side, you’re just going to be pinning this so that it overlaps the zipper. Remember this is the, let me zoom this out a little. So remember that this other side is the 5/8 inch press that you did, so it’s going to overlap the zipper. So you shouldn’t see the zipper once you’ve finished this seam. You do want to make sure that you at least line up your waist seams here. So this is my waist and all the gathering, and I do want those to line up. That is important. So I am going to pin that, and even if I have to stretch the fabric a little, or fit fabric in somewhere, I do want that seam to match up. It will look so much nicer. Ok, so that is the one that matters. Alright now the next thing I need to do, is move my zipper foot over to the other side, and I really hope that I have enough thread to do this. I’m going to start here. This is when your zipper foot comes in really handy. It really is guiding you through that. Ok, so here’s one. Op, let’s let the sirens go past.
Zipper seams should still match while stitching
So here’s one, I can already tell that there’s some excess fabric here. I need those seams to match up, so I’m just going to try to fit it in there. Ok that one was fine. Here comes the next seam. I’ll lift up my pressure foot there just to give me a bit more wiggle room. I’m going to hold this down to try to help keep it from stretching as I go through. It helps to slide your pin out just a little bit, but don’t slide it out so much that you loose your marking, or your spot there. Slowly. Ok. Oh no, I’m about to run out of thread. I can see my thread running through here on the last little bits, the tail end. I’ll pick up my foot again because I can see my fabric’s wanting to bunch down here. Whop. I do believe I just ran out of thread. Yep, yep, I did. Ok, so I almost go the zipper done. So sadly for me, I will have to finish the zipper later after I get more blue thread. However now that the zipper is mostly sewn in, I can continue to show you guys the steps at least. So here is my zipper so far. Alright, looks pretty good. I almost got to the end there, I’ve got about two more inches. Sad day. Well we can at least move on to the next steps.
Are there fabric folds in your finished zipper seam?
Oh and see this here? This is where you have to be careful with your fabric when it starts to move around. However if you see these, don’t worry about it because that’s part of your gathering that you did in the back. This fold here that looks like it’s something that’s sewn incorrectly, is actually just one of my gathers in the back. Same thing over here. From where we gathered that, so don’t worry if you see that in your dress, that’s fine.
Step 23
We’re moving to step 23 now. First I’m going to mark my piece here, on the right side of the fabric. On this piece nine, it has the markings on both sides. You don’t actually need to mark both, just mark one. So you should mark two triangles, and that’s all you need to do for that. Next we’re going to fold it together, wrong sides together, and I would recommend that you do the ends first. Then the middle. Then just pin the rest of it with however few or many pins that you need personally. You’re going to be pinning this to the bodice and then doing more gathering. I think I’m going to do one more pin in between each of these, and then I’m going to give this a press at the ironing board over there. Then after that, we can start gathering it into the neckband. So go ahead and pin yours, press it, and then come join me again with your bodice and this piece.
Step 24
We are now at step number 24. I have already pinned together my neckband binding and then the front of the dress here. So whenever you have your basting stitches you’ll match up your edges first, and keep in mind that your edge on the binding is not finished. So it should overlap 5/8’s at the end because your zipper fabric here is finished. So this is going to end up being turned into here. So what we want to do is gather the stitches between the back of the dress to the shoulder, and then you should be gathering from shoulder to shoulder. Then gathering again from the shoulder to the back on the opposite piece. The neck binding is also extended past on that side too. You’ll just do the gathers exactly as you did all the other sections that we gathered. Where you wrap it around the pin and just pull on the threads to get it to fit to the piece that’s underneath of it.
Baste or stitch the neck binding to the bodice front and back
So now if you follow the instructions, they want you to go ahead and just baste this. Normally I would baste it too. I am just going to go ahead and stitch this because I feel pretty comfortable with going ahead and doing a permanent stitch on this. I’m just going to stitch mine. Like I’ve said on other pieces, I’m trying to stitch it so that the basting is hidden inside of the seam. So I’m stitching mine just slightly left of my basting. I do recommend that you continuously feel under here to make sure that your neck binding isn’t doing anything strange. I’m just taking these where I’ve wrapped them around the pins, and I’m holding them with my fingers because I don’t want to sew all of that thread in there. Normally I just sew over those, but since this was a very gathered piece, there was a lot of thread. I don’t want to make my seams bulky by having all of that extra thread shoved in there. Just make sure if you do that, that you don’t let your gathers come loose.
Check the seam continuously as you sew
It doesn’t hurt to turn the dress every now and then too, since you’re starting to work with a large piece now. keep feeling underneath to make sure that band isn’t getting turned or twisted. Then turn the dress again. Alright this is another pin that had my wrapped thread so I’m just going to hold that tight while I sew through that now. Make sure that doesn’t pop open. Here’s the next one. Alright, we’re getting close to the end now. Here you can see that I have those long threads again. I don’t wan those in my seam, so i’m just going to pull that out. Argh, see how long those are? I’ll hold those while I stitch this. Then I’m going to do a backstitch. Ok. The next thing that you need to do is check it. If you basted that then of course you’ll need to check it and then do your permanent stitch still. Just check it.
Check your seam for errors and puckers
Make sure nothing got sewn in to a fold or that you didn’t accidentally grab multiple layers of things. Alright, mine looks good. I’m very happy with that. so the next thing I’m going to do is go through and trim this out because we’re going to be sewing this just like we did those neck bindings where it’s going to look like this when it’s done. So we need to trim this down. Oh I do see a bit of a thread buckling right here. I’m going to sew right on top of that just to make sure. That happens sometimes too when your needle starts to get dull. I definitely have a dull needle now. I think I’ve used this needle for three projects. It’s definitely time to change it. Yeah, that looks much stronger. Good. Let me check my stitching here. Ok that looks like that’s the only spot.
Trim the seam of excess fabric
Yeah, so go trim this out now if you’re happy with how it looks. Trim as close to that seam line as you feel comfortable with. So this finishes up step number 25. Here’s what mine looks like, and if you need that again, it’s the same thing that we did for the arm section. For the armhole. So if you do need to see the slip stitch again, I did that at step 15. That is the same thing that’s been done here. I just turned it to the inside and then slipstitched it all the way around the top here. It’s very pretty. The next thing that I’m going to do is sewn on my hook and eye here in the back. Then after that we have to hem it, and we’re going to be very close to finishing. We have a few things to do here on the front and then everything will be completed.
Sew on the hook and eye
So next is the hook and eye. So now I have on my hook and eye. The only thing I would tell you to note before doing this. Keep in mind, that your zipper is going to overlap itself, so just make sure whenever you start sewing your hook and eye that you zip this up so that you get a good placement on it. If you turn this to the inside, you can see that my hook right here is just on the edge, but then the actual eye is very far over on the inside. However once you close it, it overlaps with the zipper and it looks nice. So just note that before you start.
Slip stitch the dress hem in place
The next thing I’m doing, is I’m actually skipping to the hemming part because I want to do my eyelets last. What I did was I took a tape measure, and I just turned up the hem and inch and a half and then pinned it in place. I pinned it where 5/8s was, so after I pinned everything 1 5/8, then I went around again, and I just folded in the 5/8’s. So now I have an inch and five eights hem on this, and this measures just an inch wide. I’m going to go through, and I’m just going to slip stitch this entire hem all the way around the dress. So I’m starting to jump around in steps now, but that’s just my personal preference. I would rather hem this and then do the eyelets last. Alright, we’re getting very close to finishing up the dress.
Step 27
We are now at step 27, and if you’ll keep in mind, I already hemmed the dress. So this will be the last thing that I have to do before the project is completed. So there are a few different ways to do this. This is the front of my dress, and the eyelets, or in my case the grommets. I’m going to use grommets, are going to go into the flap pieces.
Mark the eyelets or grommet dots
So you can go ahead and pull out your pattern and remark those if you want. What I like to do is kind of take a tape measure, and just get a general idea of how long my section is. Then you can either use this. Oops, excuse me, that’s my cell phone. You can either use this to make your marks evenly, or you can just eyeball it. I am just going to eyeball mine. I usually have pretty good luck with that anyways. The only thing that you’ll need to make sure to do, if you’re going to do this like I am, and just freehand it. Make sure that whatever you mark on one side you do get it even with the other side. So I’m just going to look at this, kind of find my half way point, and then gauge from there. One here. Yeah, I’m happy with that. Then I’ll just mark the same thing on the opposite side. I have to make that one kind of deep since it’s white on yellow. And like here, then just step back and take a good look at it. Make sure everything looks evenly spaced. Ok, I am happy with this.
Cut out the dots
So the next thing I’m going to do, and there are several different ways to do this. This is the way that I was taught to do it, so this is how I’m going to do it. I like to go ahead and pre-cut these. So I just gold it, fold my fabric, and do a tiny, tiny little clip on each of those. Start tiny because it’s easier to make them bigger, but it is impossible to make them smaller. Alright. Then I go in, and make sure that it actually goes through both sides, and I do another tiny little snip. Tiny, tiny, tiny. That one feels like it didn’t get through both pieces of fabric. So I’m going to turn it again, and clip it again. Much better. Do this as slowly as you need to. Now I can already tell that I’m going to have to make these bigger, but that’s ok, making them bigger is easy.
Holes should hold the size grommet you’re using
So I’m going to be using grommets like this, and they basically go like that. So you have a top piece and a bottom piece. Whenever you’re attaching them to the dress, you want to make sure that this taller piece ends up on the top of the dress. Once you start hammering it, this tall section is going to fold out like this on top of the other piece. The taller piece needs to go through the top, and this is the size hold that I need to push through here, so I definitely have to make these larger. So what I would recommend you do, is just go through and cut little by little, making sure you stay in that same little dot area that you did. Just do little by little. You don’t ever want to, you know, do too much. It’s better to have it be tight and still fit over your grommet, than to have it be loose. You do not want loose, loose is not good. So just little by little. Ok so that one fits now. That’s good, that is what we want, and it comes out the other side very clean. I’m going to do that for each one of these, and you need to do that too. If you want to do yours by hand, you can. You can look up online how to do that. There are a lot of posts written by a lot of good seamstresses on how to do that. I would tell you that I don’t recommend that.
Using eyelets or grommets – my opinion
I would recommend that you use grommets because anytime you have something like this that laces or gets tied, it does tend to take a lot of pressure while you’re wearing it. So it’s better to have something stronger in there than something that you’ve just threaded that’s holding all of that lace and all of that tensions. So grommets are perfect for that. So if you’re doing this the way that I’m doing it, or if you’re doing the eyelets, go ahead and just cut these out and then come back and join me again. Alright I now have all of my grommets in. This is what they look like. Now I’m just going to use my little traveling iron board here to give myself a little bit of protection on my table, and also the rest of my dress. I bought this years ago, and I don’t actually remember the name of the company, but I will find it. I know that I got it from Joanns, and I will link it below. It’s just what you use to put your grommets in. This fits into these, and basically we’re going to be hammering on that very gently to get these to close up.
How to install the grommets
So you should have a flat piece like this, and I want the ridges that fill rough that are kind of concave, to be on the inside. So flipping those to the inside, and I’m just going to put that on top of it. Then set my tool inside here, and it fits through both of those pieces, and inside of the bottom piece. Then I’m just going to take my hammer and hammer that down. That’s about all it needs. You don’t have to go to crazy on these, just feel it, see if it pops up. This one’s moving just a little bit, so I’m going to hammer it just a little bit more. Feel it. Still moving just a little bit. You want them, you don’t want them to move around, but you also don’t want to over hammer them. Ok, that’s good. That’s not moving anymore. Alright, so, moving on to my next one. Moving on to my next one here, I have the tall part in, then I’m just going to slip one of these covers on. Put in my tool, and then start hammering. Alright. Now my third one. Put the top on, or bottom, however you’re looking at it. Put in my tool.
A story from my past grommet blunder
I should tell you too, one of the reasons you want to make sure that you don’t over hammer these. I did this a long time ago when I was just learning how to do this for the first time. If you over hammer it, it can actually cut through your entire piece of fabric. This grommet will cut through the fabric, so I actually over hammered one on one of the first corsets I made. I’ll never forget it because I was so upset, and it just ate a hole. And that whole grommet and the hole and everything, it just came out. It only takes doing that one time to make sure that you don’t do it again.
Continue the same way hammering the grommets
That one needs a bit more. Alright, now I’m just going to do the other side, and I’m going to do the exact same thing. Nothing is going to change. I’ve already got my pieces put in on this side too. That is what they look like. I’m just going to do the exact same thing again. Put the top on. That’s weird, that grommet doesn’t want to fit. That’s a stubborn one. Ok, that’s good. Now the last one. I saw that one pop out of there. Put it back. That feels pretty good. Ok so let me move all of my tools here out of the way. I’ll show you the dress. So here we go. Grommets, very pretty grommets on the outside. I love the gold. Now all I have to do is lace this up and this dress will be a completed finished product.
My thoughts on the finished dress
It’s very cute, and very kawaii, and it fits my kawaii blog just perfectly. So here’s the finished product. Tada! Pikachu dress. I am very, very happy with it. Little Pikachus all over the place. Very cute, very kawaii. The grommets in the front look really nice. Very, very pleased with my little dress project. Now I just have to decide if I want to make a headband or anything like that to go with it. I ended up using, I had some leftover suede ribbon, so this is actually a real suede ribbon, and I like the mix of textures with this with that. If anyone wants to see anymore information about his dress, I do have a bit more information on the blog. However if you watched me make it, then you should know pretty much everything that I did already. This dress is also for sale. So if anyone is interested in buying the Pikachu dress, please let me know. Thanks again for watching, see you net time! Bye!
