 have a bodice. We have a skirt. Today we are going to be combining those to make one single garment. We're also going to be working through the placket. I've got a lot of really great tips for how to get a perfect placket every single time stitching the ditch, catches underneath, and it looks super pro-fesh. So without further ado, let's get to the cutting table and I can start talking you through the first few steps in today's episode. All right, moving right along. Today we are going to be attaching the skirt to the bodice and installing our placket. But before we do any of that, I am going to pre-press my hem. I showed you guys how to do this on the sleeve hem. We're doing the same thing on the skirt. Nothing is stitched as you can see. We've just pre-pressed it because it's a thousand times easier to press it now than when you have your bodice attached. It just, you know, is all that extra fabric that you're trying to get around your ironing board. So we have a five-eighths inch hem allowance. So you are going to mark where five-eighths times two is one and a quarter. So I have from the raw edge, I don't know which of the lines you can see the best, from the raw edge I have marked up one and a quarter inches. Then I went to my iron and I pressed the raw edge up to that line and then I folded in the raw edge to meet that pressed fold. And now I have my five-eighths inch hem allowance. If you're working with a serger, you can obviously serger raw edge and then just press it up one time, the five-eighths. The reason I didn't do that though is because this is an open front, my concern is that the front, the bottom front might flap open some and then you would see the hem and I just wanted it to be as pretty as possible. Again, that's just me being hyper specific. So just do whatever, whatever you like. So pre-press your hem as the first step. Then we are going to attach the bodice to the skirt at the waist seam. So right sides together, right sides together. Let's see, I always have to really think about this because nobody likes to rip out a big long seam like a waist seam. Okay, right sides together. So right side of the bodice, here's my side seam, right side of the skirt, here's my side seam with my pocket and those two things get matched up. So we're going to match up side seams. We are going to match up center fronts obviously. Everything should be like a one-to-one situation. There shouldn't be any easing going on at all. Okay, so bodice attached to skirt. We like legitimately have a dress now and seam is pressed down, finish the seam and this is what it looks like on the right side. So beautiful. So now we are going to insert our elastic. So you need to pull out piece number four, your elastic guide and cut two pieces of elastic that are you know whatever size your waist seam is. Once you have that, now we need to feed our elastic through these, both of these channels. So I have this really cool clover. I can't remember the exact name of it but it is like a, I think it's called an elastic threader to be honest. It has this really cool point so it just easily goes through. If you don't have one of these and it explains us in the instructions which I thought was a really, really great tip, it says to go ahead and put the safety pins on the ends of both of these and then feed them through at the same time. That way you're not wrestling with the second one, trying to get it through after the first one's got everything already all bunched up but because I have this tool it makes it so much easier to get this through that I'm not going to worry about that. Maybe I'll regret that but I don't think so. So I'm going to put this in. You want the raw edges. Once you're done, you want your raw edges to meet up here like so and then we are going to baste these closed. We are going to stitch in the ditch on each of the side seams as well just to secure the elastic and make sure it doesn't get twisted in the rest of our construction or later on when you wash it or wear it or any of that kind of stuff. So elastic's going in. All right you guys, we are moving on to the placket and we are going to spend quite a bit of time with it just kind of preparing it before we attach it to the garment. Same similar concept as pre-pressing the hem. It's much easier to handle the placket when it's all by itself than it is when it's already attached to the garment. So first things first we need to, if you haven't interfaced it, go ahead and interface it. Also I fail to mention this in the fitting video but if you make any adjustments to the length of your bodice then you need to make sure that you adjust the placket piece as well. Okay so here I took that one and a quarter inch adjustment and applied it to the placket here. So that's what I've got here. Then our next step is to transfer all of the markings. I told you that I prefer in the cutting video, I told you I prefer to transfer markings on interfaced pieces after the interfacing is on just because you can just see it easier. I mean I don't know if you guys can see these little blue dots but I know I can. So transfer the notches, the two little dots here and then there's also an itty bitty dot way down here at the hem. This is going to be important when we go to turn our hem. So once you've got that the next step is to start folding or pressing in the folds of the placket. So the long unnotched edge is going to get turned up a quarter of an inch. So by now if you have not figured out what we are going to do next I'm going to reach through your computer and slap your hand with a ruler. No I'm just kidding. We are going to measure half an inch because that's a quarter inch times two and we are going to draw in that marking all the way along our placket. Then when we go to our iron before we press this up we are actually going to press the placket completely in half wrong sides together first and that is this fold line. So this is what becomes the not necessarily the center front of our garment but it becomes like the overlap like the folded piece the finished folded edge of our the front of our garment I hope that makes sense. So you need to fold this in half first wrong sides together press that in and then come in after this is pressed just unfold it lightly it'll hang over a little bit and then come in and press this up your quarter of an inch all the way down. All right once you've done that you will have something that looks like this. So we have our fold that goes down the center of the placket and then we have our little quarter inch fold as well. So I have that nice and pressed everything is nice and flat ready to go again this is the edge this where all the raw edges are exposed this is where all the notches and dots are. Okay so now we are going to put in our buttons and sometimes I will wait to do the buttons until the very very end but with this one I had a really good jumping off point being as we have the two buttons that are a part of our waistband. So you can see the waistband is closed with two buttons right there. So I knew based on the little blue dots or the little dots that I marked that the this is where the casing is. So you have your waist seam here you have your two dots and then I split the difference here and now I know this is where those two buttons are going to go right. Then I also from the placket piece was able to determine from the folded edge to the stitching line of the buttons is exactly five eighths of an inch. So I was able to mark from the folded edge five eighths of an inch in and I was able to get these two button placements done first. Then I took my button gauge I love this thing I stretched it out as wide as it goes this has eight buttonholes on it starting at the top of the placket which is the one that has the like funky edge it's like not completely straight it's actually this one I had to write the first time it has that little funky little notch thing there. So starting at the top placing one buttonhole one button thingamajig right in the middle of where my um two small dots are and then from there I went up and marked all of these buttonholes and then carried that through to the to got all eight of those done then to get the last two because there's 10 buttons on our dress I just overlapped the very last one and then marked in number nine and number 10. Okay so you're going to want to do this for both of your plackets one is going to be your buttonholes and then one is going to be where your actual buttons go. Okay so a lot of prep work for the placket none of which is sewing but it'll make when we start sewing it'll make the placket come together so smoothly I promise. All right so once you've got all that pressed and marked you're going to lay your dress down with the front facing up I've got one placket kind of laid in place the little notchy funky edge goes at the neckline the straight cut edge goes at the hem and raw edges go together so we are putting our plackets down like so. Okay so you just want to kind of open these out gently and pin along matching up the notches and the darts I mean notches and dots. Okay at the machine now with my plackets we are going to stitch these at the seam allowance which for the plackets is three eighths of an inch not our five eighths so I'm going to move my needle over and stitch the length of the placket. Okay so from here I am going to take this all over to my ironing board and we are going to press the placket over the seam allowance so the seam allowances another way of saying it the seam allowances get pressed toward the placket however you want to look at it there were seam allowances here and everything gets pressed toward the placket try not to press over the folds that you already made because you know they're already beautiful and in place. Alright so my placket is all pressed and you can see that the folded edges that we pre-did that we did earlier allow the placket to lay ever so slightly over the stitching line of the placket and if you look real closely at the raw edges I'm trying to show you this best I can um you can see that the placket's folded edge is like barely barely over passing over the stitch line of the placket itself so you need to be super accurate with this which is why we are going to baste you can of course hand baste this in if that's what you want to do I as you guys know try and do a lot on the machine sometimes things work out and the machine you know does make it easier the instructions say to leave five inches which just happens to be where the marking for the bottom um button is so I'm going to start it five inches from the raw edge I'm going to try uh I don't know sort of close let me move my needle back over sort of not at the edge because I do want to be able to um pull these out but I don't know somewhere in between maybe I'm at an eighth of an inch away from the folded edge of the placket and then on my machine all right and my machine comes with a little card like this isn't that cute and there is a basting stitch on here it is number six and as you can see on here it just illustrates a long stitch length this is going to be much longer than the 5.0 mm stitch length um that we normally baste stuff down with this is more of like a temporary baste and then it's going to kind of like stitch and then skip two and then stitch and then skip two can you all see what it's doing there and I'll show you the finished result of this whenever it stops all right and you can see the kind of stitch that we are talking about here I mean it is very loose these are probably an inch you know three quarters of an inch long in between stitches but it does just enough to keep this temporarily tacked down until we can go in and either do our top stitching or our um hand stitching the placket closed it does a really good job with that so however you want to get your placket basted down go ahead and do that and then rinse and repeat this whole process for the other side and then I'll show you how to tackle our hem and that'll be the lesson for today okay placket is basted um okay so now we need to contend with the bottom of the placket now remember I told you to start your basting about five inches from the raw edge of the hem and that is because this is how we are going to get a beautiful finish on the bottom edge of our dress so you're going to take your placket you're going to fold it back the opposite way that you pressed that fold line so the fold line is here but now instead of going into the garment we are going outside pressing or folding right sides together let's turn you guys this way um folding right sides together again they're gonna overlap the placket stitching line barely barely you are going to pin this of course my pins are never by my side who else has that problem um pin this like so and you can see why you needed a little bit of that um about five inches of that unbasted so now you're going to come in stitch along here at five eighths inch seam allowance because that is what our hem allowance is I have done this on the other side and then you just want to cut out a little bit of a wedge so my seam allowance is right here my stitching line is right here and I just cut in I don't know a scant quarter of an inch and come in here like this so that when we turn this right sides out turn the placket back to the inside you can see how it makes a really beautiful bottom corner of your dress so pretty and so at this point because we also already have our dress pre the hem pre-pressed you can very easily go in now and stitch your hem down so okay placket done how good does that feel starting to really look like a dress at this point I mean some people could possibly even wear this out maybe if you like put your hair around the neckline nobody be able to see and you could kind of have a garment either way you're not showing up naked right tomorrow we are really talking about the closures we're going to be doing buttons and buttonholes I've got a whole day dedicated just to buttons and buttonholes I know people are averse I know people are afraid I know people think they're fussy and finicky I got you covered going to give you a lot of great tips on the buttonholes to make sure that they turn out every time and then of course I've also got some alternates in case you're just like hard pass on the buttons I got you covered there's two so I'll meet you back here tomorrow buttons and buttonholes