The Haley Dress Sew-Along Part 2: Assembly

Welcome back to part 2 of my Sew-Along to make The Haley Dress!

If you missed day 1, go HERE to learn how to make your pattern!

On day one, I taught you how to make your own pattern. By now you either have your own paper pattern to work with, or you printed my pattern and assembly instructions for the 2t/3t dress HERE.

Now for the fun part - the assembly!

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Assembling Your Dress

Step 1: Cut out front and back pieces.

Take your main fabric and fold it just far enough to fit your front pattern piece on the fold. Your fabric should be folded right sides (or the side with the print) facing each other. You'll need to cut both your front and back pieces from this fabric, so play around with the fold to make sure you'll be able to cut out both pieces. Also if your fabric has a pattern on it, also make sure it's facing the right direction when you trace!! Cutting out upside down fabric sucks...not that I know... ;)

See how the apples in my fabric below are right side up? Place the paper pattern you've cut out for your front piece on the fold of your fabric and trace around it with a disappearing ink pen or tailor's chalk. Cut out.

Repeat this process using the pattern for your back piece. When you finish cutting out both of your front and back pieces, open them up and they should look like this (ignore the gold strips - those are the hem facings, I got a little ahead of myself):

See how they still have a crease in the middle where we folded the fabric to trace it?

Now might be a good time for you to hold up your back piece against your child to make sure you didn't make it too wide, too long, etc. It's always easiest to fix things like that in the early stages :) Make sure you adjust your other pieces accordingly if you do change anything.

Yay! It's starting to look like a dress....right?...Ok, more steps.

Step 2: Cut out your yoke. 

Take your coordinating fabric, in this case my gold fabric, and place your yoke pattern piece on the wrong side of your fabric. Trace and cut out the yoke (it's just a rectangle, do not cut on the fold.) Set aside. 

Next, feed your adorable assistant...

...and then get back to sewing!

Step 3: Cut out and hem your hem facings.

Next, fold your coordinating fabric wrong sides together like you did in the step above. Place the short end of the patterns for your hem facing on the fold and trace around them (this will double their length when cut out). Cut out. (Not sure why this picture ended up sideways, but you get the idea.)

Since I didn't take a picture, and I've had some questions about this part, here is a tacky diagram to show you what the hem facings look like in regard to your front and back pieces so far:

Now fold and iron 1/4 inch one of the long edges of each of your front and back hem facings. Fold 1/4 inch again and zig-zag stitch down your fold.

Step 4: Sew the gathers and attach the yoke.

So now that we have the main pieces cut out, you can begin putting everything together.

Thread your sewing machine with your coordinating thread and set your stitch length and width to the highest numbers they can go. My stitch width was 5 and my length was 4. Now take your front piece (the one that is the widest of your 2 main pieces) and 1/4 inch from the top, sew straight across without backstitching at the ends. This is called a "basting." Cut your threads at the end, leaving the tails long like this:

See the long thread tails? On one side, tie your 2 threads together in a few knots to secure. On the other side, grab one of your threads and gently pull it while pushing your fabric toward the other end to make gathers. Don't pull too hard, you don't want to break your thread!

 Gather the top of your fabric until it is roughly the same length as your yoke piece. Mine was 7 inches. Knot your thread several times and trim the excess from all 4 threads.

Step 5: Attach the Yoke.

Fold your yoke in half with the wrong sides together. Pin the raw edges of your yoke to the raw edges of the gathers you just made like this (notice this is pinned on the "right" side of your fabric):

Here's the view from the back showing you how the yoke is attached to the right side of your front piece.

Now set your stitch width and length back to your normal settings and stitch your yoke to your front piece, backstitching a few stitches at the beginning and end to secure. Remove pins and unfold. Press your garment flat and topstitch in place. I used a zig-zag stitch for this because I like how decorative it looks.

Step 6: Attach your hem facings.

Line up and pin the raw edge of your front hem facing to the bottom edge of your front piece with right sides together. Repeat with the back hem facing and back piece. Using a straight stitch, sew the raw edges together 1/4 inch from the bottom (about where the needle tips are.)

Unfold and iron flat. Then, right side up, zig-zag stitch from end to end where your hem facing was sewn to your main fabric to help it lay flat.

This is what the bottom of both your front and back pieces should look like.

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RECAP

You should now have a gathered front piece with the yoke and hem facing sewn on, and a flat back piece with the hem facing sewn on. (I forgot to take pictures of these 2 so I Photoshopped a couple pictures of what they should generally look like.)

front piece so far

back piece so far (no gathers on top though, I couldn't get rid of those in Photoshop :)

Alright! Tomorrow we'll make the straps, bias tape, button panel and closure.

Thanks for sewing along with me and if you have any questions, email me at myownroad(at)yahoo.com!

The Haley Dress Sew-Along Part 1: Making Your Pattern

Welcome back! Thanks for joining me for my first sew-along :)

Remember this dress, I made my daughter from a knit t-shirt that I had laying around? It's a perfect little spring dress for playtime in the beautiful weather we've been having lately. I love it so much that I came up with a pattern and tutorial, and I'm so excited to share it with you!

Over the next few days, I'll be sharing this project in pieces so you can sew along with me. So grab your supplies and let's get started!

Supplies for this project (this is for a 2t/3t dress):

• 1 yard cotton fabric
• 1/2 yard coordinating cotton fabric
• 1/8" elastic
• 2 buttons
• Sewing machine and thread
• Rotary cutter and mat (or scissors and ruler if you're REALLY careful)
• Iron and ironing board

For the first part of our sew-along, we're going to talk about creating the dress pattern. If you want to make a 2t/3t dress, you're in luck. I happen to have created a pattern and instructions for assembling the pattern for you to download HERE! The pattern includes seam allowance and fits my tall 2-year-old. If you would like to make a different size, don't fret friends, I'll show you how to make your own pattern below.

I hope you'll look past the fact that I'm self-taught and may not know all the correct terms for the different fabric pieces, so in those cases I substituted my own :) Hopefully you'll get the general idea, I've tried to make things as simple as possible. And if you have any questions, ask away! I answer every email (just make sure you include your email address!)

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Making Your Pattern

Step 1: Create your back piece 

First, find a dress that fits your child well (one with spaghetti straps would be best). With the front facing you, line up your edges and fold the dress in half so that the front of your shirt is folded inside the shirt and the back is on top.

Tuck any straps or sleeves behind the dress. Line the dress up with the side and bottom edges of a piece of paper -- I like to use a large drawing pad or card stock because it's thicker so it's easier to trace your pattern onto your fabric. If you're using regular paper, you may need to tape a few pieces of paper together to fit your whole pattern. Next, trace a straight line running from the neck to 1/2 inch past the shoulder of the dress, then trace around the arm holes as shown below. Now, trace down the side of your dress to the bottom 1/2 inch outside of  it for seam allowance. Make the bottom of your dress a straight line.

Cut out your pattern. This will be your back piece. Mark this as "back piece" to help you remember which is which.

Step 2: Create your front piece

Now, because the top is gathered, you need to include some additional fabric to account for the gathers. Take the pattern for the back piece you just made and place it on another sheet of paper about 2 inches away from the edge. Trace from the edge of the paper and around your back pattern piece all the way to the edge to include the extra 2 inches for gathers.

Cut out. This is your front piece. Mark this as "front piece."

Step 3: Make your yoke

The yoke is the rectangle of fabric on the top of the dress that encases the gathered front piece.

You want this piece to be as long as the neckline of your back piece. Measure the neckline of your back piece and double it for the length. My neckline measured 3 1/2, so my final rectangle length was 7 inches. For the width, your yoke should be about 3 inches wide. Draw and cut out a rectangle with these measurements. Mark this piece "yoke."

Step 4: Make your front and back hem facings

Lastly, your hem facings. The hem facing is the bottom, decorative rectangle on your dress.

You'll need 2 rectangles in 2 different lengths since the front piece is bigger than the back. Measure the bottom edges of both your front and back pieces then double them. These are your lengths for each rectangle. Length for my back piece was 6 3/4 inches (or 13 1/2 inches total), and the front piece measured 8 1/4 inches (or 16 1/2 inches total). The width for each rectangle should be 2 1/2 inches. Make 2 rectangles total, one of each length, and with a width of 2 1/2 inches.

Mark each respective piece as "hem facing front" and "hem facing back."

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So to recap what we just did, you should have a total of 5 pattern pieces that look like this:

That's it for today! Come back tomorrow and we'll begin assembling your dress. Feel free to email any questions to me at myownroad(at)yahoo.com!

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