 Hi you guys, welcome to the very first day of the New Look 6, 7, 2, 8 sew-along. Today, we are going to be working on the gathers for the bodice, both the bodice front as well as the bodice back, and we are going to be working on our sleeve hem. This is the short sleeve, but I'm also talking you through the long sleeve hem. We are going to be attaching our sleeve to our bodice as well. So we have a busy day of sewing. Let's get to it. Alrighty, so our first few steps here are to do some stay stitching and to prepare the bodice with some gathering that we will pull up when we go to attach the sleeve. So you're going to grab your piece number one, which is your bodice front. We are going to stay stitch the neckline. And if you can see from the instruction, the arrow says to go from the center front up to the shoulder. So that's what we will be doing. That's the direction of the stay stitching. So you just come in here and stage stitching is at the seam line at a normal stitch length. Just stitch a line of stitching right through here and it prevents this from stretching out because this is on the bias. We want to make sure that we have something in there to prevent it from doing any stretching at all. Then while we're over there, we're going to put a row of gathering stitches here. Gathering stitches are at the longest stitch length your machine has. That's usually 5.0 and you're going to do two rows of them. I'll talk you through my little tips and tricks when we're at the machine for gathering. But there's going to be two rows there and then we're also going to do two rows down here. A row of gathering stitches here for between the two notches, which you can kind of see my little notches there. So that goes on both sides. And then also while we're over there, I'm trying to get as much done as possible at the machine at one time. We're going to take our back piece and the back piece also gets some gathering done and that gathering goes in. Let me make sure you guys can see this well. That gathering goes in along the neckline. So your pattern piece looks like this. Along the neckline from this little notch here up to here and then you turn the corner and come down this way and end it at the seam line of the shoulder seam. In addition, the back also gets some gathering on the lower half as well. I told you guys, I hope you like gathering. There's a ton of it between the two notches. So I have a notch here and also one here. So we're going to be doing a row of gathering stitches there as well. And then finally, finally for the bodice front, we will be sewing the two front pieces together at the center front. And then if you're going to be finishing your raw edges in any way, I'm going to be using a serger. If you're doing zigzag or whatever, go ahead and finish the center front seams separately. Then stitch between the two dots. This is your only opportunity to serge those and you want to do them separately because the seams get pressed open. So imagine all of our gathering and stay stitching is done and then we will stitch this here in between the two dots that we marked on our pattern. And finally, while we're over there, we are going to be stitching the back to the front at the side seams and then finishing those side seams as well. So a lot of work happening over at the machine at once, but this is the best way to make use of your time instead of going back and forth, back and forth. All right, so see you at the machine. All right, going to knock out this stay stitching really quickly going from the center front to the shoulder. All right, let's talk about some gathering. I'm going to show you how I do it one time and then you just rinse and repeat for all those different areas that we discussed. So I'm going to show you on the bottom portion of the bodice front. Again, we are gathering between these two notches right here. There are a couple of tricks that people like. One of them is they will do one row of stitching and then pivot and come back and do the other one this way creating a couple of vertical stitches here that act as the anchoring. Not my favorite because it's hard to remove this first row of stitching that it inevitably is visible after you stitch your seam. But I do like the idea of anchoring in some way. So what I'll do is I will actually drop my needle at this, at the starting point and I will backstitch one time and then come across and do the rest of the row of stitching, leave my tails long over here and then come back and do drop my needle again at the starting point backstitch one time. That one backstitch is enough to kind of sort of hold it in place, but in a semi-temporary kind of way. Our back bodice piece however is the anomaly here. We are going to be doing the gathering stitches through the neckline and into the shoulder seam pivoting at this point here and you pull up the gathers from this end and then you also separately pull them up from this end. So don't backstitch at either end of this just make sure you have long tails on both ends. This will be our anchoring point and it will prevent the gathering stitches from pulling out either way. So one long continuous stitch with long tails on both sides for the upper back portion. And then I'm also doing stitching at so the seam line is five eighths of an inch. So I'll go one eighth outside of that and one eighth inside of that. So all right, so there is my gathering. I've done the backstitching of course on the same side right started the same place both times did my 5.0 stitch length all the way to the ending point and then have really long tails over here to be able to pull up the gathering. So go ahead and finish this on all of the shoulders and the bottom like lower portions of back bodice and front bodice. All right now just placing the center fronts together matching up the notch and then we're going to stitch only between those two dots backstitching at both of them. Okay center front is done now we're attaching the back to the front at the side seams like so matching up the notch that's there and then finishing those seams. Right so uh bodice is done for now we're going to move on to the sleeve. If you're making the long sleeve version in my opinion is actually simpler than the short sleeve version but I'm going to talk you through this quickly. The first thing you're going to do is make the dart so if you have all of your three points marked on your fabric you are going to turn this right sides together line up your dots and your raw edges this little raw edge here and you're going to stitch backstitching here coming all the way down following this little dash line stitching off the edge here not backstitching and then tying that into a knot then you will have your dart done and that goes in the shoulder and then my little nifty trick for hems in the round so whether this is the hem of a skirt or a top or whatever even a sleeve I like to press the hem in first before I sew the tube. So you're going to go to your iron you are going to press up the hem allowance by five eighths and then you're going to turn this under by a quarter so the casing that you are making should be three eighths of an inch wide just pressing not sewing anything then go to your machine turn this right sides together stitch your underarm seam at this point this end will all be they'll have creases in it stitch under here finish this edge however you're finishing it then you can finger you could like manipulate it with your hands along those creases to turn up the hem it's just a lot easier to do the hem flat than it is in the round at this point you have the creases so just follow those turn it up top stitch all the way around at the very very edge of that three eighth inch casing then add your quarter inch elastic using the elastic guide sew that off close up your hole and then meet back up with us when we get to the neck band okay for everyone making the short sleeve with me we need to grab our certain we're going to step 10 and we need to grab our sleeve pieces which include 13 and 14 and then also your facings which should be interfaced at this point okay so taking pieces 13 and 14 we are going to be attaching them at the overarm seam so the the short sleeve actually instead of getting a dart it actually gets a seam that goes along the top of your arm which I think is pretty cool it'll be an interesting detail that's for sure so we're just placing these right sides together and you are matching up your notches and you're stitching from the what it will be the neckline this raw edge all the way down through here kind of doing a little baby pivot and then stopping at the big dot which you can barely see but it's right there and indicated also here on the illustration while you're over there you're also going to stitch your underarm seam and finish that as well this seam will get pressed open like a book so you're going to want to finish these edges separately and then while i'm over there because you know i like to do double duty we are going to finish the unnotched edge of the sleeve facing so that is this inner part here you can do that at your serger which is what i'm going to be doing or you can turn this under by a quarter of an inch just know that when you do that and you get to this little teeny tiny curve here you're going to need to cut into this ever so slightly to create some room for your hem to turn under and then coming or it's going to be a little bit you know not difficult just fussy to do but you can press this under that's obviously going to be the prettiest way but i'm going to do the least stressful way um and just finish this off with my serger once that is done then you come in and you stitch these right sides together um and then you come in here and you stitch from this raw edge down to the dot and then i'll meet you back here at the table so i can demonstrate for you how exactly how these pieces all come together so we just finished all my serging and we are going to attach the sleeves to each other and then the facings to each other from the raw edges down to the large dots that we marked um when we were cutting out our fabric okay so we have our two sleeves and our two facings i'm going to show you this on the tissue because i think it'll be easier for you guys to understand what's going on and also there's like a little baby error here so i want to illustrate that as well so this is the front and this is the back and then you have your facing and your facing matches the dots as well right and it comes down through here but see this little notch that notch needs to match this side i i'm not entirely sure why because i believe the sleeve facing is symmetrical but we're just going to do what they tell us right so you have to make sure that the notches match when you put these two things together and then on top of all of that if it weren't confusing enough when you do that like so now even though the little baby dot here that's supposed to match the underarm seam is lined up the the notches aren't so one of these two things is off um so we're just going to fit it in the best that we can knowing that this marks the underarm seam and these two things belong on the same side of the sleeve so what that looks like is um the sleeve and the facing need to go right sides together so i'm going to turn my sleeve right side out and turn my facing inside out like so okay oh no inside out okay um then i'm going to find that little dot which is here and i know the dot goes on the under arm seam so pick that up like this then shift it around so that this facing goes over like you're tucking the sleeve into the facing okay so then shimmy this guy over to where the dot matches up with the under arm seam and then just double check that your notches are on the same side they are yeah so this is right okay cool so i think the dot is supposed to go at the under arm seam and the notches are not supposed to match that's that's what i'm going with here um because when you come over here and you flip out your seam allowances at this point the big dots should match again okay the big dot on the facing and the big dot on the sleeve should now match so you have to turn your facing the seam allowances out pin at the dot and if you extend your pin that'll act as kind of like a brace to keep that and again you're starting at the big dot and going all the way around to the other dot the other big dot okay try and be super accurate there and and have your stitching match up like see where this stitching stops that's where our facing stitching should start but you have to make sure you're not catching anything else underneath okay so give yourself a little bit of grace here take your time be patient um and be really accurate through here now this is before trimming or layering any seams or anything but what you want to make sure is that right here at this little intersection of all four seams that there's not like a hole or a gap there so i'm pretty feeling pretty good about that actually um and then you can come through and make sure that everything looks good through here all right so our next steps are going to be to work with this seam allowance so that we can understitch this and get it to lay nice and flat anytime i'm working on a curve i love to use a um some pinking shears to trim this back because it creates little zigzags and gives yourself the room that you need so grab those the instructions say to layer i'm not i'm not going to layer you can layer if you want layering is just making one of the seam like making the one with the interfacing shorter than the one without i i never noticed how that really makes a difference it just seems like extra work like maybe an old wives tale i don't know those of you out there that are like you know super knowledgeable about construction or probably feel free to correct me in the comment section but i've never noticed a huge difference so i'm just going to trim these back evenly using the pinking shears all the way around okay now we go to our machine and we're going to understitch as far as possible you're not going to be able to go into the little v that you made but you should be able to get pretty close and understitching is when we sew repeat after me sew the seam allowance to the facing seam allowance to the facing not to the sleeve to the facing always seam allowance to the facing okay um so you're going to stitch you're going to pull it back like this so that it's facing the facing that's laying flat on your machine the facing is now over here over here on the facing and we are going to be stitching very close to the seam line all the way around is one of my absolute favorite favorite construction things in sewing because this unlike uh layering the seams does actually make a huge difference it's going to cause this whole seam to roll to the inside and you'll never see your seam line it's going to make a beautiful beautiful sleeve hem isn't it really cute i mean lots of effort but i think it's really worth it okay so now they want you to top stitch this um you can if you're if you have a nicer machine that looks pretty like the bobbin stitches look as pretty as the um spool stitches um you can just turn this inside out and stitch close to this um these exact stitches um if you don't then the way that you do it is you baste you hand baste all around here and then you copy that hand basting with your top stitching and then the last part for today's sew along is to attach the sleeve to the bodice and again this is the last part and again this is going to be one of those things that feels weird and wrong like you're not doing it right but you most likely are okay so we have our bodice which looks like this right she's flat and open and here is our arm side okay here's the underarm seam side seam and our arm side okay so again there is a right way and a wrong way to install this if i were to put in my sleeve where we start matching i always take the underarm seam side seam and match those up first so i know that that is right and then as i come around and wrap this sleeve i need to make sure that the double notches are on the back bodice indicated by double notches here and mine is if you're wrapping this around and your single notch is laying down here then your sleeve is upside down you need to grab the other sleeve okay so come around here i just got lucky honestly it's a 50-50 shot i get in this right the first try okay so you come around here you match those notches and then so you should have a dot you can barely see mine but i have a dot right here that dot matches up with this dot right here okay so you take the two dots i like to put a pin through one of them and then a pin through the other one of them okay so now i know that this is where i'm going the this pin needs to be straight then i can pull up using the bobbin stitches the gathering until it matches okay then once you have that this again should be flat against your neckline there's another dot here and another dot here those again get matched up as well a little fussy finicky but not difficult you just have to pay attention to what you're doing and um follow the dots the dots will tell you everything that you need to know all right so once i've got that i also like the other trick i have is i like to put it in my machine where the gathering stitches are on the throat plate so that the feed dogs can help me out just a little bit they're not going to do a ton of work but um they help me out a little bit in distributing the gathers through these two points because i don't want any huge puckers i want them to be pretty and gathered so we're going to be stitching through the middle of these two stitching lines so if you see that it just looks like a beautiful little like ribbon kind of thing flowing then you know you've done it right if you see the fabric like folded over itself that would be what would result in a pucker okay so we're going to leave the neck stitching the neck gathering alone for now we will get to that in tomorrow's video um but so pin around here and then you come around to the front that was only the back half guys they do come around to the front and again the notches don't match i don't know what's up with the notches but just know that the single notch goes with the single notch the back notches matched no clue we're just going to ignore that those of you that are like quilters normally they're like i'm going to try a garment or probably pulling your hair out right now the fact that those things aren't matching up but i promise you trust the process sometimes there's just mistakes are there mistakes in quilts i don't know but then the next idea is that this these two dots here one dot two dot actually go like this okay and the gathering being pulled up is what is going to bring those two things together so grab your gathering stitches or your sorry your bobbin stitches okay gather this up and because we have that little baby backstitch at the end of our gathers we don't have to worry about pulling this out i mean obviously i'm not yanking on it but um still keeping it somewhat in place okay so now we have this dot and this dot those two things get lined up and then we have this dot and that dot and those two things get lined up and that dot yeah okay cool the other thing i want to mention this will be more important as we work on the midriff and waistband tomorrow but you want to make sure that you're not pulling up the stitches the gathering too much and then causing this area to have to ease into that you want this area to be completely flat and only ease in the gathering okay so now we've got our situation happening we're going to the machine and we are going to stitch all the way around this armhole making sure that the gathering stitches are underneath on the throat plate coming all the way around to the other like making a U shape all right so you're want to finish that seam as well this is what it's going to look like when you are done i mean could not be cuter right so you've got your overarm seam you've got your little um like tulip split and you've got your gathering rinse and repeat for the other sleeve of course the other side of your bodice but that's it i think it's really so stinking cute um and i think that chambray was a perfect choice for these gathers and this little hem anyways i'm just gloating now so um so yeah finish the sleeve um construction for both sides and i'll meet you guys back here tomorrow where we will work on the neck band and the midriff