more spring/summer sewing for Daughter

I got a good start on Daughter's blue dress today. It was cold and pouring rain and the ground was covered in pea-soup fog, so it was a good day for some sewing.

The pieces were already cut and marked, so I started with interfacing the plackets and collar. I chose to use a slightly heavier interfacing than I usually do - typically I use Pellon featherweight fusible, because I sew mostly lightweight cottons, but the one I used for this linen was a tad more stiff to give the linen some body (still fusible).

Because I only needed to interface a tiny strip of the fashion fabric, I decided to use my rotary cutter and ruler to slice up the interfacing:

Easy peasy!

Once the pieces were cut, I fused them to the edges of the front skirt sections:


Then I turned the plackets under on both bodice pieces and both skirt pieces:


All I managed to do after that was gather the skirt sections and sew them to the bodice pieces, because my mom called and we yakked it up for the rest of naptime.

I really, really promise that those gathered seams are straight in real life. Something about the angle of the camera makes them look crooked. Hopefully when I show the finished garment they will look better.

I must mention that my new favorite thing is topstitching. Lots of Ottobre patterns call for some serious topstitching, and it makes a HUGE difference in the finished garment. The seams lay nice and flat, and the garment looks much more professional and less "homemade." I love it, love it, love it and plan to incorporate it into more future garments...even though it hogs thread!

Next technique to try: binding seam allowances. My serger seems to be seriously dead now...I do not know what happened between projects but suddenly it is just chewing up my fabric and it looks like the thread threw up all over the place. Disaster. I'll be starting a change jar to collect up some money for a new one (ha! I'd better get a job). In the meantime I have to use some other techniques to avoid ravelly messes inside my garments. I'm pondering using thin bias strips of something lightweight (batiste?) to do something like a Hong Kong finish on the shoulder and side seams of this dress. I don't know if it will work or not. I just want something a little nicer than zig-zagging the edges. Thoughts, anyone?