 to what I like to call episode zero of my sew-alongs. This is kind of all the stuff that you need to do to prepare for sewing. So when we jump into the sew-along here in a week or so, you will have everything prepped and ready to go and we're gonna just hit the ground running with sewing. So in today's video, we are gonna talk a lot about the pattern. We're gonna talk about ideal fabrics for the pattern. We're also gonna talk a little bit about getting your pattern to fit, knowing what size to cut out and any initial alterations that you are gonna have to make. So I'm gonna be using my Fast Fit Worksheet. You can get it off of my website if you want to use one as well. I'm also gonna be using my ditto form so you guys can see almost exactly what it would be like if you were to tissue fit the pattern on my body because the ditto form is an exact replica of me. So we'll get the initial kind of circumference fitting taken care of with the Fast Fit Worksheet and then we'll fine tune everything over on the ditto form. So we have a lot of information to cover in just one video but you'll have, like I said, a little bit more than a week to figure out all of these things on your own and then when we get to the actual sew-along, we'll just be sewing. So let's jump on over to my cutting table where I can talk to you about the pattern and all of the wonderful, fun fitting stuff. All right, you guys, let's first talk about the fit of this pattern. I have gone ahead and filled out my Fast Fit Worksheet. You can find these on my website if you want some help in kind of determining how to measure yourself against the pattern measurements, against the pattern ease. This makes it really easy I think but we are taking a look at the pattern. We have a pretty loose bodice. The waist is taken in by the elastic and then we have a very loose fitting skirt. Same thing with the sleeve, pretty loose fitting sleeve. So we're gonna try and keep some of this in mind as we determine our measurements. The other thing that I wanna point out is it looks like this elastic casing is a little bit long for her body. So that makes me think that the bodice might be a little bit long as well. The finished garment measurements are printed on the pattern pieces. You have your bust on your bodice front, piece number one, and you have your hip measurements on the skirt front, which is piece number five. You do not have any waist measurements but as you can see these lines are perfectly straight. So whatever the bust measurement is is what your waist measurement is also because this is a straight line and these are straight lines too. So you just go ahead and apply those both places. So for my measurements, it turns out that what I need to cut is a size 18 in the bodice for the waist. So I was in between sizes on the waist. I went for the lower size, which is what I always do in big four patterns. If you're in between, go the lowest size. But as it turns out, the larger size would be exactly what I need. So I would either have to add half an inch to each of the seam allowances, which would also be the same exact thing as just cutting the larger size. So I'm gonna end up cutting a size 22 in the waist and in the hip, I actually fall outside of the size range. So I have to make the largest size, which is a 22 and then they add that half an inch to each of the side seams, which isn't that big of a deal because this skirt is an A line skirt. It's straight lines are just adding a diagonal. So grading out there won't be an issue at all. I went ahead and also I like to use this note section to notate the sizes that I'm gonna cut for all the other pattern pieces. Cause when you get started cutting, things get really confusing. So the easy ones are the sleeve. The sleeve is gonna match the bodice. The neckband is gonna match the bodice as well. So I'm cutting an 18 in both of those. Again, because this is a loose fitting sleeve, I don't have to worry too much about sleeve fit. I did check the bodice or the bicep measurement. And I think that there was what five inches of ease there. So that's plenty. So I don't really have to worry about the shoulder cap and everything else. I can presume based on that really generous bicep that everything else is gonna fall. And you can see, I guess, better on this side, how generous the sleeve is. So I'm not too worried about that. Then the neckline would match your, whatever your upper bodice is. So when it comes to the placket, what you need, what the placket is is basically one long piece of fabric that is not cut up along the waistline. It's one long piece that's gonna go from your neckline all the way down. So you just need to make sure that it is consistent with the length of your bodice and your skirt. The good news about this pattern is that you can see along the center front, all of the sizes are the same length. The only place where the length is different is up here. So if I'm cutting an 18 in the neckline, which I am, because that's also what I'm cutting in my bodice and my collar, then I need to make sure that the 18 is what I'm cutting in the placket. So that's how you know what size to cut your placket based off your neckline here. If you look at the skirt piece too, the center front of the skirt piece and the hem all have the same length no matter what size you cut. So you should be good as long as your placket matches your bodice size. The other thing that I checked was the bodice length. So they give you on your measurement chart, the back neck to waist. I used my ditto form to determine that my back length was 15 inches. When I measured the pattern, I got 18 and 1 eighth. So just like I said, I thought that this might look a little bit low. It definitely is. So I'm going to remove one and a half inches from that. I might, might, might end up removing more, but I'm gonna start with one and a half inches. If you have a super drapey fabric, you might like that it blouses over the elastic a little bit. My fabric is a little bit more structured and I don't want it to poke away like in a stiff way away from my body. And if I had three inches of extra fabric there either, it's gonna drop down like it's doing on hers, which I absolutely don't want. I want it to be fitted at my natural waist. That's the smallest part of me. Or it would like, it would like pull over in a very awkward way. So we don't want that if we can help it. All right, so here is my finished front bodice piece. I did end up taking out two and a half inches from the length. If you are cutting a straight size from your bust to your waist, you can just chop off whatever length you need from the bottom line here, but because I was grading mine out, it really makes more sense for me to pull from the center, kind of where this starts to curve in. That way it makes truing this seam up a lot easier. I also checked the shoulder length measurement against my ditto form. I am four and a half inches to where I like my shoulder seam to hit, especially on a sleeved garment. And this is exactly four and a half inches. So we are good to go there. And that is my bodice front. I will take my back piece, go ahead and remove that two and a half inches. And then once that is done, then I will just take these two things, line them up so everything matches along the side seam, and then just kind of mimic the curvature here so that I know that they match. And I don't have one that's like a little bit more, like where, I don't know, just so I know it grades out in the same places and at the same degree. So that'll be bodice front and bodice back easy enough. So for the skirt, the only changes I'm making are adding that half an inch to the waistline or to the hip line. So my hip line is here and I just will add some extra tissue paper here and measure. I just use the leftover tissue paper from what I've just chopped off. I don't like go out and get anything special for this, but I'll just lay this under here, tape it all along and I'll be grading out from a 22 to a, what would be a 24 somewhere in this area here. All right, so I have the pattern pinned tissue fit if you will onto my ditto form. Ditto form is an exact replica of my body. So this is pretty much like tissue fitting on myself. You don't have a ditto form. You can tissue fit on yourself. It's just a little bit more difficult obviously because there's a lot of things to take in here. I always like to start at the top when I'm tissue fitting and work my way down. So from the top, it looks like the shoulder seam is in the right place. It's also at the right angle. We have a three eighths inch seam allowance. Yes, three eighths inch seam allowance for the neckline. And it's not perfect on when you're tissue fitting. You're just kind of getting close. So we're very close there. We also have a three eighths inch seam allowance along the center front. So we have that there. Now I am looking at lengths. So if you can see the bust line is right here and it is in line with my bust line which is denoted by this little black ribbon that's running through the apex of my bust. Then if we come down again, remember I had all those concerns about it being too long. These two dots are going to be the casing for our elastic. And there's gonna be two rows of elastic kind of running through here. So I wanna make sure that these split the difference on my waistline which is this black line which they are doing. So everything's looking really good on the front. The arm side is nice and big. Here, I'll turn it to the side. The arm side is nice and big for a sleeve. If I were making the sleeveless version, I would be a little bit concerned about how much ease is through here. But because I'm adding the sleeve, you kind of need that in order to move in that sleeve and to have your shoulder joint kind of be able to raise your arm and let it down and all of that kind of stuff. The side seam is lining up with the side of my body. I mean, this is a blousy or top so it's not gonna be super fitted. So for all intents and purposes, that looks good. It's when we get to the back that I have a little bit of a problem and it's actually big enough of a problem that you guys can't even see. Okay, there we go. Look how much longer the back is than the front. And you can really see it from the side. Do you see how this is all tapering back? From what I can tell, that is not the intention of the design, the pattern design. It's all supposed to be nice and level. So what I need to do is come in here and measure the difference and take up the center back. Kind of do a wedge. It's almost like, I guess it's like a sway back adjustment but I don't have a sway back. So it's not that. It's just, I don't know. The pattern was drafted longer. I don't know. It's hard for me to assess the why this is happening but I do need to take this up a good, probably another inch in order for all of this to kind of come up like this and be straight across. Otherwise, the elastic casing that's gonna come through here is going to serve as the anchor. It's gonna pull all this up and then I'm gonna have all this pooling on top of the elastic, which I didn't want in the front which is why we took all that out, took out the same amount in the back but I still need to take out a little more. They want both rows of these elastics to be above your natural waist. I don't think that I want that. I think I want them to split the difference which is what I have here. So I'm gonna just kind of modify this to be how I like to where I'm more comfortable having elastic along my true waist rather than a high waist. You can tell I don't have a very long waist anyways. So I don't wanna take up too much more of that space. So I'm gonna leave it here and then adjust the back. So that might be something that you guys wanna check out too if you normally have to make back length adjustments. This is definitely gonna be one of those. So I'll just measure the front race line wherever it's hitting and then I will match it up to the back and make that adjustment before I cut my fabric. All right, that is a lot better. You can imagine all of this kind of being pulled in by the elastic and we have a much closer center front, center back horizontal line here kind of ignoring what's happening in between because it's just so blousy. But I did end up having to take out, I don't know, what is that? An additional, almost two inches, one and seven eighths of an inch. So, and then it tapers down to the same alteration I made earlier on the side seam. So there's that. I'm not gonna put the skirt on the ditto form because it's just an A-line. There's, I mean, I didn't find any issues with the width or anything here. So that's all I would really be able to find out from the skirt as well. The width is gonna, around the bomb is gonna be fine because it's just so roomy. So we're good to go on the skirt. The bodice was really the biggest points of contention. So there we have it, ready to cut out our back. I have prepped my fabric by washing it and drying it as I intend to after the dress is made. For me, that's gonna put in the washer and put in the dryer. So I did the same exact thing that I would normally do. If you're someone that washes and then air dries always, then pre-wash your fabric and hang your fabric to dry. Then press the fabric, I was a good sewage, press the fabric and press all of your pattern pieces. I'm starting to follow the layout for UB. I have wider fabric, I think this is 50 inches, 52 inches. So it's actually fitting into this 44, 45 inch category better than the 58, 60 category. I can't fit 3D pier, these two don't fit. So I'm following this one instead, cutting out as you normally would, making sure to, you know line up your grain lines, line up your fold lines and all of that. But what I wanted to talk to you about, maybe a little tip here, is when you have a pattern that has multiple lengths, and you know, you have a cut line for the shorter length and then a cut line for the longer length, I always just go ahead and cut the longer length. And then I'm gonna show you how I transfer this cutting line to the fabric. Okay, so what I've got here is my back skirt piece on the fold. I have some pattern weights here that are a little bit off-camera for you guys, but I have been kind of placed all around the edges except for in the area that we are not going to be cutting. So I can lift this up like so, then I'm gonna place some tracing paper down. Now the tracing paper, I only need to trace one side of the fabric. I don't need to trace the underside because as I cut along this trace line, it's obviously gonna cut the layer that's underneath it. So I just place this face down and make sure to get it underneath that cutting line like so. Okay, perfect. And then I'll just lay some pattern weights around. I'll grab my tracing wheel and then I will just trace along this cutting line so that it transfers to the fabric. This is like the most accurate way and you don't have to cut up your pattern and then remember which part you cut off goes with which thing, you know how it is. So remove those, pull this back and we have our new cutting line. So what I can do is I can just leave this, pull it up like this and then just use this as my cutting line and then as I come down along the side seam, just kind of match those two things up together. So okay, get it all cut out. Remember to clip your notches. I also clip the circle dots. That's just something that I do. I don't like to trace onto the fabric if I don't have to and the circle dots are usually good enough marked with a snip into the fabric. Then fold it all up, keeping your pattern pieces with the fabric that you just cut out because as you can imagine, the front skirt and the back skirt look a lot alike and you granted one's on the fold and one is not. So that'll make it a little bit easier but it's just a good habit to get into. Just kind of package this all up and set it aside as one piece so you know that the pattern piece goes with the fabric. You can reference the pattern piece easier later so on and so forth. Okay, remember what I just said about clipping for the dots? Well, I take it back. Well, I don't take it back on bigger pieces where they're just showing you like the pocket layout which is what the bigger dots are on the skirt, no big deal but on something like a collar where accuracy is so, so, so, so important. I will trace the dots from the pattern onto the fabric but I don't do it onto the fashion fabric. Instead, I do it onto the interfacing. So both of these pieces have to be interfaced. I need a new rotary blade. Both of these pieces are interfaced. You can see that here. Cut one of interfacing and then cut one of interfacing. So what I'll do is I will transfer the markings to that interfacing. It's easier to see on the interfacing and you're not kind of messing up any of your fabric. So I'll transfer all the dots, little ones and big ones to the interfacing. I do clip all the notches on the collar pieces but dots get transferred to the interfacing. Another thing about collars is you do not want to fuss with them too much. You wanna get them interfaced as soon as possible to prevent any stretching from happening to the piece that the one piece of interfacing gets applied to. For the other piece, just fold it gently, pin it to keep it all together and then just lay it somewhere and kind of forget about it until you need it because there's a lot of bias curves on this and you do not want this collar stretching out in any way. So just be really, really gentle with it. I know it seems like a little bit of overkill but I would rather be too careful than to care less. So the next little cutting tip I have for you guys is when you have these pattern pieces that are like 45,000 miles long, go ahead and just fold over your fabric. So I have four layers of fabric in here and then this is the halfway point for piece number three and then I folded piece number, what is this, five, eight in half to find its midway point and now I'll just cut through creating my own fold line and that way I'm only having to cut this length rather than all that too. I think it just helps it be a little bit more accurate also and then of course it's easier slash lazier. Once you get cut out on the fold, you just unfold it, lay your pattern piece on top and then put it in your notches and your dots. We're also not going to mark our button placement until the very end, I never use these. I'm going to try it on and then decide where the buttons go based on where the dress is hitting on my body. So I'm not going to transfer any of those, just the dots and notches. Okay, one last and final tip for cutting out your fabric and it applies to the pocket piece. The pocket piece will have you cut out four of yourself fabric. I don't do that. I actually treat it more like a lined piece. So I'll cut two of the fashion fabric and then two of like a lightweight, slippery kind of lining fabric. First of all, this prevents me from needing to use up too much of my expensive fashion fabric. Secondly, when you construct the pocket, it's less heavy if half of it is like super lightweight which translates to when you're wearing it and the pockets won't be as bulky. They'll be kind of half as bulky. So it's kind of a personal preference thing with the pockets. You only need to cut two out of your fashion fabric because that's all you would ever see. Like you never would see the other two. So if you did them in a different fabric, it would be fine. But I have a feeling a lot of you would have the same personal preference as me where you want less bulky pockets, you know? Okay. I know that was a lot of information, but hopefully it will set you off on the right path to getting your pattern cut out, feeling confident what size you need to make and any alterations that you are gonna make to the circumference. Anything that you are going to double check on the pattern for yourself as I have done for myself on the ditto form. And then you can also get all of your fabric cut out. I will see you back here in a couple of weeks for episode one of The Sew Along where we will start working through this pattern together. I cannot wait to get started with all of you. I'm so excited about this one. Shirt dresses are one of my favorite things to sew ever. So I'll see you back real soon. Bye.