Battle of the Dress: Making a Dress From Start to Finish, Part One of Two

My sister-in-law is planning her wedding for this Fall. She has super cute taste and a gift for shopping. If I were a stylish piece of clothing trying to hide she could hunt me down so fast. The only trouble with shopping is that sometimes what you want just isn't made yet. Bridesmaids dresses can be tricky to find in exact colors and within a certain price range. 

So I'm making my own--without a pattern. And that's not because I'm awesome, it's because learning how to read a pattern has been more frustrating for me than simply researching individual sewing techniques and trying it out on my own. Plus doing it myself rather than copying another's pattern makes it feel more personal to me.

She sent me a silhouette of the dress pattern she has in mind, so here's my plan...

Step One: The Sketch

I start all my sewing designs with a sketch, usually on a scratch piece of paper or on my trusty iPad 2. Apps like Paper or SketchBookX are excellent choices on the free market. Napkins or junk mail envelopes work too. 

"The sketch" includes three things: 

1) Feature List. In the case of this dress, I want a boat neck, quarter-length sleeves, pockets, gussets under the sleeves, lapped zipper, bust darts, and a knee-length skirt complete with kick pleat and filler. Don't be fooled; I've never sewn a complete dress with any of these features put together. This is a dream list. As I start developing my pattern and time moves on it's highly likely some of these things will be sacrificed.

2) Order of Operations. Trying to outsmart my own system and skipping the triple-O is my greatest cause of unpicking seams in the wee hours of the morning because I just wanted to get that one blasted project done. Second-greatest cause is buttonholes, and there's almost recovering from that one. During planning I make a note of the order of operations as I go. I don't always know all the steps ahead of time but assembling a "this-goes-before-that" list builds my map to the finish line. 

3) The Design (obviously). I sketch a line drawing of the basics, indicating where the features belong, estimated measurements if applicable, colors if they matter, and anything else that will help me get what I want.

Once I have the sketch, I move on to...

Step Two: Practice

I learned a valuable tip at the craft store today: if you're buying fabric for practice, look for stains. I can't believe I never thought of this before! I grabbed a bolt of bleached Muslin for some testing and when the woman at the counter unrolled the fabric from the bolt we discovered a grease stain. I paid $9 for $18-worth of Muslin and floated home on a cloud; that's powerful stuff.

My intention for the fabric is twofold:

1) Wash it. I don't care about the stain, I just want the texture and stretch to match the actual fabric I may or may not use for the final garment. I don't know the material at this point; one can only hope for knit when designing a wiggle dress. "Knit at a wedding?" you say? Time will tell.

2) Make a sample. This is where the gussets and lapped zipper--both features I've never sewn before--will be tested, tweaked and wrestled until I figure out what those crazy online tutorials are really trying to say.

More on "practicing" when I get there. Laundry first.

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When reading this you might be tricked into thinking things like, "She's got it all figured out!" Or, "That dress is going to be amazing!" Of course, lest we forget, this is my first full dress design and I've never tried half the things I want to include, so this will be fun! ("?")

Gussets and facings and zippers and pockets all promise late nights of measuring, unpicking, and stitching. (And maybe another word that rhymes with "stitching"...) 

Needles may be broken. Bad words may fly. At least can all laugh about it when it's all over...

Do you have any tips that make your sewing experience easier? Feel free to share!

If you give a seamstress fabric, she might make a dress to go with it...

When someone gives you a bag full of fabric and asks you to make some doll clothes using whatever you want, would you stop at two tiny outfits?

I didn't either. 

When I was a kid I played with Barbies. Everything I saw or imagined was in the context of some amazing life story I could play out with my friends. Little pieces of cardboard became books on a tiny shelf. Shoeboxes became wagons in the Old West, or hot tubs. But did I ever think about the time and effort that went into how those tiny little clothes were designed?

Pfft. No. 

Have you ever taken the time to really examine the size of those armholes? We're talking about millimeters. Thank you, Mattel, for your diligence in making little girls like me happy. 

This week I was commissioned by a new friend to design two outfits for a small doll. Since her grandmother had given it to her years ago, the old pajamas lost their stretch and the soft colors faded. The little doll just needed a little wardrobe update.

The doll is only about 5.5 inches long but has the belly of Santa Claus. Being someone who has never designed doll clothing beyond wrapping with wash rags, I started from scratch. I measured, I brainstormed, and in the end it all came down to two simple things: a pillowcase dress and some fond childhood memories of Velcro.

Bless you, NASA, for designing something so simple.

Remember when I asked what you would do if someone gave you a bag of fabric and permission to use as much as you want for the project? Scrap after beautiful scrap I pulled from the bag. Old fabric, new fabric, it didn't matter.  It was all amazing.

Then I found the winner. It was a creamy cotton dotted with tiny little blue stars. And there was just enough to make not one, but two dresses: one for the doll and one for the little girl who loves it. 

I. Could. Not. Resist. 

I rifled through my stash of lace, fired up the iron and assembled the cutest pillowcase dress I've ever made.

Never heard of a pillowcase dress? It basically is what it sounds like. Here is one basic variation:

1) Cut two armholes into a large, double-layer rectangle shape. See the sides of the rectangle together up to the bottom of the sleeve. 

2) Line the armholes

3) Make a casing at the top of each side for lace, ribbon, or fabric strip to wrap through

4) Hem the dress

5) Thread the lace, ribbon, or fabric strip through one side and then the other

The ribbon ties over one shoulder.

Or if you're a doll, the casing could be (and was) sacrificed for Velcro on one side. The doll pajamas were designed using a large triangle with sleeves and an opening for the head, with a pair of stretchy pants to match. 

The bigger dress was definitely more fun to make, but the fact they match each other just makes me grin with glee. I love knowing something I've made brought someone else joy.

Questions? Comments? Please share!

Funny Bone Syndrome: It's a real thing

When I was a kid and teenager, I crocheted all the time. Blankets, rags, potholders, whatever I felt like. Mostly blankets. One time when I was 17 I fell in love with this one blanket pattern and I got so caught up in it I crocheted two blankets in the same day. 14 hours of non-stop crocheting and listening to the soundtrack from The Lord of the Rings (#1). Two blankets in the same day! I felt so accomplished and crafty. It felt amazing!

Then, the next day, I noticed something strange. Holding my toothbrush was excruciating. My hands had the strength of a paper doll. At first I wasn't worried. I played drums in percussion ensemble at school, typed a lot on the yearbook staff, I was learning sign language and I'd just kicked that crochet blanket pattern's booty in a single day. Maybe my hands really were just tired.

But it didn't go away. For two weeks I ignored the numbing in my pinkies and ring fingers. Sometimes they got so numb I couldn't even feel them. Then the aching came; this was the tipping point. I could hardly do anything without first consciously asking myself whether it was worth the pain of flexing my hands.

Friends, this is called two things: overdoing it and severe tendonitis. By the time I got to physical therapy for treatment the scar tissue around my ulnar nerves ("funny bones") was so bad it sounded like crackling paper when touched.

Don't let this happen to you.

That was ten years ago. I still suffer from numbness and tingling sometimes. When tendonitis of this nature happens so frequently it is medically referred to as Ulnar Nerve Entrapment, also called "Funny Bone Syndrome".

My message: pace yourself. Educate yourself. Learn the risks of overuse and listen to your body when it tells you to slow down. If it's happening to you now, get treatment! I had to give up crochet because I didn't know my limits. If it someday means I have to give up sewing too...I don't know what could possibly take it's place.

Don't let it happen to you.

Got a cautionary tale of your own? I'd love to hear about it. Please comment below.