50s rockabilly fishtail skirt

hello everybody,

It was a while since my last post, but finally here it is: a skirt in the 50ties style but with a modern twist, my idea was to make sort of a fishtail skirt.

For the skirt I am going to use a black polyester/ cotton blend, red lining and some old trousers with a gingham pattern.

 

 

 

The base of the skirt is a slim pencil skirt. I flat drafted the pattern, because I have learned this method in school and desperately wanted to try it.

 

 

 

I cut the pattern out in the black and red fabric on the fold, each two times.

 

Then I marked the Darts I had 4 in the back and 2 in the front, I also did this on the lining ( the lining gets always treated the same as the main fabric)

 

I sewed all the darts and the side seam on one side. The same for the lining as well.

 

Then I closed the other side seam but left approx. 25 cm open to insert the zipper there later on

Before attaching the lining I did finish all my seams with a narrow zic-zac stitch, since I don´t have a serger, but this method has grown on me, mainly because it is the recommended method from the  original instructions of the maschine from 1959, so if it worked back then it´ll work for me

Then I connected the lining and main skirt togehter with a straight stitch 0,5 cm from the upper edge

 

So the next part was rather tricky, so I don´t have much photos, but I´ll try to explain it best as I can.

 

Since I left the 25 cm open for the Zipper on both pieces I had raw edges here, I could have just finished them with a zic-zac as well, but I wanted to try something else:

I flipped the skirt inside out, that ll the edges and darts face outwards. Then I pinned the the raw edges togehter. S ot looked like this:

 

 

When pinned I sewed 2 cm away from the edge, (This was my whole seam allowance, I did that because the skirt was a bit wide, if you would want the exact same width then you would have to only sew 1 cm, ecuase the zipper needs one as well)

 

For the end I stopped right before the seam and sewed it close by hand.



Then I flipped it back on tje right side and the seams are hidden on the inside. Then I pinned the Zipper and sewed it in. This is an invisible Zipper, which means it Need to be sewn ony with the teetht facing away drom the slit, but there are plenty of tutorial, where this process gets explained better.

When the zipper was inserted, I was time to work on the waistband and the ruffled hem, for that I wanted to use an other fabric, which was kinda unconevtional. since I was in a school for tourism, I had these pants for cooking at home and I liked the pattern, sooo I decided to cut the pants and make something new.

 



 

So for the waistband I two strips with my waist- measurements.

The strips got connected by side seams, then the black and gingham one got sewn together.

The Gingham strips gets folded in by 1cm and then sewn down with basting stitches, which will eventually be removed again.

 

I sewed the waistband 4 cm away from the top edge to the skirt, these 4 cm were  2cm seam allowance and the other 2 cm got reduced so the waistband will sit in the right spot.

First I sewed the black side on with the right side facing the lining.

Then I cut the excess  fabric away and left only about 1 cm. After that I flipped the whole waistband to the other side and sewed the edge of the gingham strip down.

So now for the ruffle, I decided to finish the the hem of the ruffle with narrow bias tape, So I needed approx. 2 meter of bias tape. The other unironed bias cut strip  will be for some piping.

 

I basically sewed it on the same way as the waistband. first the right to the left side, then flipped it out and finsihed it with a another seam

 

I am making the piping relatively simple. I took some cotton cord and wrapped the bias strip around it and sewed it down with the support of a zipper foot.

Then I started on the hem of the skirt. I wanted to make it asymetrical, first I tried it on and marked it with pins, then made a chalk line and cut it there.

Since the red lining frays a lot, I hemmed that first with a 1/2 cm hem. First pinned it carefully, then sewed it down.

Back to the ruffle, I finished the vertical edges by hand, so there isn´t any visible topstitching.

 

With a running stitch i gathered the fabric, I used the tiny squares as a guide for my stitches, which was quite handy,

 



The waistband the fastened with 2 hooks and eyes:

 



 

Then I sewed the rufflle on and sandwitched the piping  between

the skirt and ruffle. I pinned it toegther very carfully and moved the folds around till there were even.

 

And I also sewed it really slow and careful, and just like for the piping I used a zipper foot, so I could get really close to the piping.

 



The seam allowance wasn´t finíshed, just cut with pinking scissors. and then pinned upwards and stitched down , as  close as posible to the piping..
at the very end I also stitched the two ends of the piping together by hand.

 



At last I sewed 2 fake leather Buttons on, just for decoration.

 

 

with that finished, the skirt is ready to be worn and here are two photos of me wearing it:

 

 

 

 

Sewing a floral sweetheart dress - Part 2

hello everybody,

so this is the second part of making the sweetheart dress. and I´ll talking about making the skirt and finishing the dress.

First, like always, I needed to calculate the pieces of fabric.

Since the bodice as two seams down the center I wanted them go over into the skirt ( if you would cut the whole skirt out of one piece of fabric, this isn´t necessary, but since I had a pattern with a direction, I needed to look at the seams)

So I measured at my bodice from seam to seam, then I had 4 numbers and mulitplied each by 2,5

These are the widths of each piece, the length was in my case 60 cm, but I shortened it later on

 

 

Here are all the 4 pieces:

 

 

Then I finished all the raw edges vertically with a zic-zac stitch, since I don´t have a serger, you could also do this later, but I like to finsh the edges first.

 

 

 In the next step I connected all the pieces together so I had this long strip of fabric with 3 seams.
altogether I had two thin pieces, one wider front piece and one, which was rather long for the back ( the zipper will be on  the side)

 

Then it was time ruffling the top ofthe skirt, this is a process I enyod normally, but since this fabric is so stiff I couldn´t gather it with normal thread, so I had to redo the complete stiching and I also had to go with larger ruffles, which were more or less cartridge pleats.

In the end I used heavy duty thread and stitches that were 1 cm apart from each other.

 

 

Then I gathered it down, by making a knot on one side of the thread, and pulling on the side, till it fitted to the bodice.

 

 I evenly distributed the pleats so that each seam of the bodice goes over into the seam of the skirt, I took a lot of time for is, because I am a perfectionist

 

Sewing the pleats was a tough task for me and my maschine, because like I said before, the fabric is really thick.

 

I finished the wiastline as usual with some bias tape, which I made out of the lining fabric. First I cut three strips, so that they match my waist circumference.

 

 The strips get sewn toegther so I have one long strip, with my bias tape maker i ironed the strips

 The last step was to sew in the zipper, I would have used an invisible one, but my local fabric store didn´t had one.

 

  I hate sewing in the zipper and I am pretty miserable at it too, but with my new sewing maschine the task was bit easier, so it isn´t as bad as some others I made.

with the Zipper done, all that  is left to do is hemming the skirt, but I was a bit in a rush so I didn´t  photograph it.

And here are two photos of me wearing the finished dress

 

 

thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it :)

 

Sewing a floral sweetheart dress - Part 1

hello everybody

This is a tutorial / walktrough how I made a floral sweetheart dress with princess seams. First i started drafting the pattern, I won´t go in detail on that process, because I used a Video for this myself, but I´ll link it here.
As said first I draped the pattern on my dressform, with white muslin and traced around the lines I created before. Then I laid it out and copied on paper, then sized it up and down to fit on my body.
I did that by measuring my chest and waist cirumferences and the ones from the dressform. Then clalculated the difference and divided it thruogh the number of my seams. then i enlarged or reduced it on the paper.

After I had the pattern I made a quick mock-up and altered the pattern to fit me really well. Then i cut the pieces out of the fabric. For the dress I used this floral fabric with blue, cyan and pink flowers on it. the fabric is very stiff ( should be a blend of cotton and synthetic fiber) ,so I won´t using boning, also because it´s less work and is easier to clean.

Then I made the first seam, the princess seam and i have to say, this one is really tricky, mainly because you have to ensure after every stitch, that the fabrics didn´t slip out of place and that there aren´t any wrinkles.  I calculated the seam allowances with 2 cm.

 

 

 

It looks like this when it´s finished, I left one side open, this will be for the Zipper. and yes the bodice looks really strange, when it just lies on the desk.

 

so here is a photo, when I tried it  on for the first time. Trying it on in between steps is really important, because if there are any mistakes, you could still correct them. for example. mine was a little big wide on me, so instead of the 4 cm, I will take in 6 cm on the side were the Zipper is. Altogehter I am really happy with the bodice. so I won´t make any other alterations.

But I wanted to add straps to the Dress, for more comfort when worn, thin straps don´t need much material, so I like to make them out of scraps, which meant, that I first had to cut the skirt, because it needed the most fabric and I had to look at the pattern. 

With the scraps I could cut the straps, I made them 60 cm long so I have enough room for adjustments and 3,6 cm wide, so they would fit through my bias tape maker, but I didn´t cut them on the bias, altough many recommend it. I didn´t see the reason in it. 

 

 

So I put them, through my bias tape maker and then folded in in half, the final straps are 0,9 cm wide. then I sewed across the edge to hold them togehter and they are finshed.

(first I tried to turn them inside out, but my fabric was apparently to stiff for that, it was a disaster)

 

 

The next Thing I made was the lining, I used the same pattern for it, and sewed it just like the outer fabric, first the princess seams, then the side seam, but I did make sure, that the side seam is on the other side, since the seams will be unfinished and they shoud face away from the body to the outer fabric. ( I hope that makes sense) I used a slighty shiny white cotton as lining.

 

So I left the seams raw, but I did use my pinking sheers on the lining, not on the main fabric, because there is a possibility, that the little zic-zacs show trough. I just trimmed them to about 0,5 cm

 

Then I put the lining, the main fabric and the straps together. It is very important to make sure, that the seams and the straps match, so I pinned this first and the everthing else.

 

After that I sewed where the needles are the sides and on the top. the right side of the lining, to the right side of the main fabric.

 

When I turned it around it looked like this. I ironed the seams open, wich wasn´t an easy task. but it really makes the wohle top look a lot better. ( The top looks a lot better on me, my dressform ist just too small for it, so it Looks kinda strange)

 

 

This is only the first part, because I really want to start on the christmas dress. I will continue this dress in january.

 

thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.

If you want the see the process of the Christmas dress, follow me ;)