The Haley Dress Sew-Along part 4: Finishing Touches

Thanks for joining me on the last day of The Haley Dress sew-along! Today's the day we finish your dress! Today is going to be easy street compared to all you've done over the past 3 days.

For the previous days' tutorials, go here: DAY 1, DAY 2, DAY 3.

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Finishing Touches

Step 1: Sew your front piece to your back piece.

Pretty self-explanatory :) Line up your edges and lay your assembled front piece and back piece on top of each other with the right sides together. Pin your edges from the bottom of the armhole to the bottom of the dress.

Ew, very yellow picture - sorry for the bad lighting..

Using a 1/4 inch seam allowance, set your machine to zig-zag stitch and sew down the side of your dress from the bottom of the armhole to the bottom of your dress, backstitching at the beginning and end to secure. Repeat on the other side.

Turn your dress right side out.

You 2 pieces are now joined together

Step 2: Attach your straps.

Take one of your finished (or purchased) straps you made yesterday and line up the seam of your strap with the armpit seam on your dress. Pin your strap around your dress, enclosing the raw edges of your armhole, bias tape on the back piece, and yoke inside your strap.

Sewing close to the edge of your strap, sew a zig-zag stitch the entire way around the strap starting at the bottom of your armhole. Make sure to catch the other side of your strap as you sew. Repeat with the other arm. The folds on your strap should be closed now and the raw edges of your dress enclosed within the tape.

Step 3: Attach your button.

Use a needle and thread to hand sew your button to the back of your dress directly across from where you sewed your elastic.

If you don't want to add the flower, your dress is done!

But you know you want the flower...

Step 4: Make your flower.

Trace 4 large circles from your main fabric, 1 large circle from your accent fabric, and 4 slightly smaller ones from your accent fabric. I used a couple of bottles of fabric paint to trace around for this. Cut out. I would recommend applying Fray Check to the perimeter of each of your circles so the ends don't fray.

The one large circle you cut from your accent fabric will be your base that you attach the other circles to (mine is the one large gold one), set that one aside.

Take the circles you just cut from your main fabric, fold them each in half, wrong sides together...

...then fold in half again...

...and pin each of your little triangles on top of your base circle (which should be right side up). Stitch the points of the triangles down in a kind of a "square" formation, removing the pins as you go. (See picture below where I've demonstrated how you should stitch in white.)

Fold the rest of your circles like you did with the ones above. Place them on top of your stitched circles in the same fashion and sew down the same way.

Now, hand-sew a small button on top to hide your stitches, and hand sew to your dress!

And you're done!!!

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Thank you all so much for your wonderful feedback during this series! Your comments and questions have made all the hard work I put into this tutorial worth it.

I would LOVE to see your finished dresses and feature them on my blog! Send your pictures of this project (or any others you've made with my tutorials) to the email below.


Please email me at myownroad(at)yahoo.com with any questions you may have.

The Haley Dress Sew-Along Part 3: Button Panel, Bias Tape and Straps

Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me this far. Don't worry, you'll have a finished dress by Thursday! If you missed the other 2 days of the Sew-Along, go HERE for day 1 and HERE for day 2.
Today we're going to get into the detailed stuff. Bear with me, it might get a little wordy :) 

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Making the Button Panel, Bias Tape and Straps

Step 1: Make the button panel and closure.

To make the button closure, I followed Jess's tutorial HERE on Craftiness is Not Optional. She explains it way better than I could. The only thing I would do different is to cut your rectangle 3 inches wide and 5 inches long out of your main fabric. Her size was a little too big for my dress.

Follow all the steps for making the button closure until the part where you cut down the line you drew, turn your panel inside out and press with your iron. Stop after that.

As you can see, I didn't stop sewing 1 inch from the bottom like you're supposed to, so my opening is way too big. Read Jess's instructions better than me :)

After ironing and turning, you may want to put a few more stitches from the bottom of your opening to the bottom of your panel to keep your button panel flat. My panel kept flipping up until I sewed it down.

Put a few stitches between where my fingers are

Step 2: Make your bias tape.

Now you're going to make bias tape to enclose the top raw edges of the button closure you just made. If you want to keep it super easy, just buy 1-inch bias tape at the store, I won't judge you ;) If you're using store-bought bias tape, skip down to Step 3.

Measure across the top neckline of your back piece (mine was 7 inches) and add 1/2 inch. Cut out a 2-inch wide strip from your accent fabric in this length, preferably on the bias for more stretch. (Check out more on making bias tape over at Prudent Baby.) That said, I've made bias tape without cutting my fabric on the bias plenty of times. I'll leave the choice to you!

Now that you've cut out your fabric strip, iron it to make your bias tape:

    1. Fold your strip in half long ways (wrong sides together) and iron.

    2. Unfold, and with the wrong side facing up, fold each side to your middle crease and iron.

    3. Fold in half again and iron, and you should have a finished piece of bias tape. Um ew, ignore my
        gross ironing board. I need to recover that...

Step 3: Attach your bias tape.

Now that you have created (or purchased) your bias tape, find the middle of your strip and cut it in half so you have 2 smaller pieces of bias tape (my whole piece was 7 inches long so when I cut it in half, I had 2 pieces that were each 3.5 inches long).

These pieces will be enclosing either side of our button closure we made yesterday, so you will need to have 1 closed end on each strip. You could just stitch the end some, but I'll show you how to make it pretty without exposing any raw edges (another great tip from Jess on Craftiness is Not Optional.

To do this, unfold your bias tape...

...and refold down the middle with right sides together (it will look like an "M" when folded). 

Stitch one end together...

...and turn right side out. Use the end of a pen, chopstick, etc. to push your corner out. You'll see that you have a nice, enclosed end now. Repeat with the other strip.

Now, tuck the raw edge of one side of your back piece and button panel into your bias tape that you just made. Pin and zig-zag stitch across to secure. Repeat with the other side.

Step 4: Make your straps.

Ok so confession: I made my straps wayyyy too long. I definitely botched my measurement, and I realized this after I had sewed them onto my dress - that's why my straps are tied in wonky bows. Don't get me wrong I love the bows, but I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to make them the way I did, which is to try and finagle a bow out of a circle and put a couple stitches through it. I would just make a plain, circular strap if I were you. As in Step 2 above, you can use 1-inch store-bought bias tape for your straps if you prefer.

To figure out how long your straps need to be measure the circumference of the strap on an existing dress, then add an extra 1/2 inch for seam allowance. Cut 2 fabric strips (preferably on the bias) this amount long and 2 inches wide from your accent fabric. My strips were each 12 1/2 inches long with seam allowance, and 2 inches wide for my 2t/3t dress.

Follow the instructions in Step 2 above to iron your strips into bias tape (don't cut these or finish the ends, just iron them.)

(the left 2 are my 2 straps)

Now you want to make a circle with your bias tape. Unfold one of your and place the ends back to back, with right sides together. Sew the ends together.

Turn your circle rightside out and refold - this is one strap. Repeat to make the other strap and set aside.

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RECAP

Today we created your button closure and encased it with the bias tape you made.

We also made both of your bias tape straps.

Tomorrow we will sew everything together and finish your dress!

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 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!