Finishing a sleeveless dress (facing or lining)

During the long time I've been sewing I've used several ways for finishing a sleeveless dress. There are methods where you don't sew the center back or the side seams until the facing/lining is done. Which not always works as I'd like to, as it doesn't give you much opportunity for fitting while sewing. Which is what I (and a lot of you too I think) often do. At least for finetuning in the final fabric. The method I describe here requires the shoulderseams to be left open. And as it's a method for a sleeveless dress (or top), that's only a small seam to baste for fitting purposes. I like the fact that you can sew in the zipper too, if required, before sewing the facing/lining to the dress. Or use a pattern without a center back seam. 

I'm sharing this method with the regular disclaimer that this is what works for me. I'm not claiming this is the perfect method. In the steps below I refer to the facing, because that is what you see in my photos. It would be no problem if the lining was attached to the facing or if you use lining only. It's a lot of steps in the way I describe it here, but it's not overly complicated. Give it a try and let me know how it worked!

Step 1 

Sew the dress without sewing the shoulder seams

Step 2

Sew the facing without sewing the shoulder seams. Usually this will mean sewing the side seams of the front and back facing. My dress has a center back zipper, which was installed first and there are 2 back facing parts. If the dress has no center back seam, the facing for the back can be one part.

Step 3

Baste/pin the facing to the dress.

Step 4

Sew the facing to the dress, do not stitch to the end of the seam, leave about 3cm/1.5 inch open.

Trim and clip the seams where necessary. Again not to the end of the seam.

Step 5

Turn, press and edgestitch on the facing. How far you can do the edgestitching depends on the width of the shoulder, but do not stitch till the point where you stopped the seamstitch. Stop a little before that point.

Step 6

Fold away the facing and pin and sew the shoulder seams of the garment. 

Step 7

Pull the shoulder seam inside out.

Step 8

This is the most fiddly step, pin and sew the shoulder seams of the facing.

Step 9

Pull on the seams and match the shoulder seams from the garment and the facing. 

Pin the neckline and armhole side. Sew and make sure you start and end at the previous stitching lines. This is easier to sew when the seam is still wider, therefor it was not trimmed in the earlier step.

Step 10

Trim the seam, I trim the corners too to remove as much bulk as possible.

Step 11

Turn back the facing by pulling on it. Press the shoulder seam and you're done!

Vogue 1183 less formal

Vogue 1183 has been in my pattern collection for a long time. It's a lovely dress by Kay Unger. Very nice design lines with waist accent.


The only "problem": it's a more formal style and in my life I have only limited need for formal dresses.
At some point I was inspired to make this dress in denim and use topstitching in another color, as done on jeans. Unfortunately I didn't take notes on size used or changes made, I just have two pictures that I shared with my sewing friends on Whatsapp. I moved the center back zipper to the side and am certain that I took it in on the center back neckline, as I usually do. The waist is interfaced and has two layers of fabric to give it more stability.





It's a dress I loved to wear this summer. I did not line it and it was cool on a hot day. As you can see in the first picture the fabric was not very thick. For me a good combination of fabric and pattern.

Finished project - coat

Think that I said it already: I have quite a few projects that never have been published on this blog. Sometimes this bothers me, as my blog is also a personal story of my sewing journey. When I see blog posts that I have written, say 8-10 years ago it sometimes strikes me that I have forgotten about a project or see a project that was loved, but worn out in the meantime. I like this keeping track of my projects, so I decided to try to publish more of my projects, even if it's something that it's not very interesting to others.
In this post photos of my coat, of which I published construction photos here and some random photos of a few projects made in the past few months.

Dress from souvenir fabric

It’s not often that I find a fabric store close to me when I’m on holiday. This year, when we drove into the village where we had rented accomodation for the second week, I noted a fabric shop when we entered the village. Of course I had to pay a visit to the store, being at walking distance. It’s a shop specialised in linen fabrics, garments and home decoration (cushions, tea towels) with the name Lin ou l’Autre (nice wordplay).

Two fabrics came home with me as souvenir fabric. Note the flax thread and the cute cards they have. I particularly like the one with the picture of taking a strand of thread out to make sure it’s straight! I’ve often done that.

Both the colour in above picture and of the finished garment below are too bright. It’s really red, but not as fire-arms red as the pictures suggest.

I made a dress from one of the fabrics I bought, which is fast in my book, only been on the shelves for about 3 weeks!

The pattern I used is Vogue 8972, view B.

I made a muslin of the upper part because I didn’t want to take a risk with my good fabric. It has pattern pieces for different cup sizes. I used D-cup and that was fine. As always I had to lengthen the bodice, which I did at the indicated line, which was in the waistline pattern pieces. That certainly was wrong: the upper part ended too high, not covering the bust area, which made the waistline look silly. I added the extra space to the upper bodice pattern pieces and that was where it should have been in the pattern too. As you can see I add quite a bit (4 cm).

Unfortunately the photos don’t do the pattern justice. I really love this pattern and how it looks and feels on me. I think it’s a great pattern for hourglass figures.

The lining was sewn by machine. It was a bit of a puzzle. The instructions tell you to do quite a bit of hand sewing. More than necessary in my opinion. I know it’s not that difficult or time consuming, but I like to do it by machine if I can. In this case it’s extra complicated as you can’t leave the shoulder seams open till the last moment, which is one of the ways to do it. Not if there’s a cap sleeve of course.

It was a bit complicated and one day I might make photos and write it down properly. For now I will have to make do with some short notes I made myself too.

Inside of dress 1351

An update with a few photos of the inside of Vogue 1351. The lining has a deep neckline with darts, to which the cowl of the dress is sewn. No seam edges visible

I made sure the dress was folded a bit inward at the armholes and the edges were understitched as far as possible. The light blue was the only colour I had available and as you don’t see the lining from the right side, it works well.

The lining with the darts keep the dress close to the body. No unwanted exposure when moving in this dress.

I really love this pattern and am thinking of making another one soon.

PS: in my previous post I mentioned making a center back seam, that was not on this dress, but on another one.

Dress Vogue 1351

I first became aware of this dress a while ago when Carolyn (from Handmade by Carolyn) made a lovely version in navy and pink. She also mentioned that the lining of this dress was so beautifully drafted and the pattern thus has a neat finish on the inside. This got me intrigued. As it was OOP by then, I asked my friends whether they had a copy of this, but no one had. One of them found it soon after in a second hand shop and gave the pattern to me. YEAH!! (thanks again Sheila).

It’s an easy dress to make. I traced a size 16 for the body, compared that with my sloper and it was very close. I tapered to a larger size for the waist/hip area but trimmed that off later as it became shapeless. It indeed has a lovely finish on the inside, of which I now realise I haven’t taken photos yet.

As my fabric is a non-stretch fabric of unknown material I did sew in the side zipper, as indicated by the pattern. With the front and skirt being cut on the bias, the fabric made strange pleats around the zipper area. I interfaced the edge where the zipper was sewn, which probably added to the effect. End of story is I took out the zipper and don’t miss it. The other changes were lengthening the bodice by about 4-5 cm (default change for me), adding a center back seam to be able to make it less wide at the neckline and sewing the underarm with a very narrow seam allowance. The armhole was a bit too deep if I used the 1.5 cm seam allowance.

For a change there are photos of me wearing the dress outside.  These pictures are taken in France, where we enjoyed a lovely holiday. Not perfectly ironed, not my priority on a holiday, my apologies ;).

On our way home tomorrow. Some sewing again next week probably.

Border print

This fabric is a fabric that caught my eye, ordered it and made it up within two weeks. I made the dress for a dinner I had with friends on the occasion of my birthday. I finished it the evening before the event, which was lovely, but then the flu got hold of me. Nasty flu, been years since it got hold of me but this time it was my turn apparently. Haven’t sewn a stitch in two weeks, but now the energy is coming back. Time to show you the dress.

This border fabric was sold by panel, only 1.20 meter long. Which is not a lot to make a dress for someone with my height. It worked, though I had to cut the facings with a seam.

The pattern is based on my Suzy Furrer sloper, combined with a neckline that was inspired by New Look 6184. Thanks Viv for suggesting this neckline!

I don’t have this pattern but it was easy enough to rotate the shoulder, armhole and bust dart to these neckline darts. I left the waist darts in place, as that’s better with my figure.

Pictures from the zipper and lining. All done by machine with good result. The front and back of the dress were sewn first, leaving the shoulder seams and part of the neckline open. I love this way of construction, which I learned in Sara Alm’s class on facings.

When you don’t do things as you advice

A while ago I wrote a post on hemming knits with a coverstitch, showing a way in which a row of basting thread helps you to stitch accurately. Definitely a method I recommend and I do it that way most of the time.  Last week though I was a bit in a hurry to finish a dress and thought I could wing it. The reason I thought this was that the fabric was very stable, with no tendency to wrinkle or distort.

Well, it didn’t happen as I hoped. Most of it went right, but there was about 20 centimeters of a loose hem.

 

For the rest it was a nice hem and I didn’t feel like undoing the stitching (do you know that feeling that when you don’t want to unpick a coverstitch hem comes out very easily, when you want to unpick it takes forever?).

A piece of hemming tape was the solution. I cut away a bit of one side to make the stitching on the tape closer to my hem.

Ironed it and my hem was done, with great stitching on the front. Nobody will be the wiser seeing this dress.

The resulting dress, Vogue 8946, which I made more than 3 years ago in a print. It was a dress I loved to wear, but had reached the end of its life cycle. For this version I lowered the neckline a tiny bit and brought the shoulders a bit more in to the neckline. I made more photos but it’s ever so difficult to get good photos of this black fabric.

Knip mode dress–October 2017

There is a reason my jacket is not finished yet. I’m too easily distracted sometimes. I’ve been sewing dresses. One of them is a dress from the Knip Mode October issue.

A relatively easy dress to sew. The back darts of the line drawing are not in the pattern. My full review is on Patternreview.

In different light the colour looks almost purple on my screen. It’s a warm, dark red in real life.
In these pictures you see that the pleats of the skirt are done first, then the bodice is attached and the pleats of the bodice partially cover the waist seam.