 Hi, you guys. Welcome back to Sew Along that we're doing for simplicity 9642. If you're following along in the Sew Along workbook, this is a free asset that I designed to work in conjunction with the Sew Along to help you stay organized and stay on track in terms of timing as we make our way through making this project. So without further ado, let's get to the cutting table. All right, for today's sewing, you're going to need your garment, obviously. You're going to need an invisible zipper. The only one that I had that remotely matched my fabric was this like 24 inch zipper, so you can shorten them. So I'm just going to have to be sort of wasteful. You're also going to need your facing pieces and surprise. We're also going to be adding our gathered, our little ruffle to the bottom of the dress today, too, because there's no reason why we can't go ahead and finish the bottom of this dress before we work on the sleeve. So first things first is this zipper that puts us at step number eight, nine, 10. We're going to do all that here real quickly. So your machine should be set up with your invisible zipper foot. We are going to take the right side of the center back. So the other one comes around like so. So this is your center back, yes. And then your zipper itself goes right side down. So where the zipper stop is that gets put right side down like this. This is another one of those skills that I have in that e-course. You guys, the e-course is great because you can refer back to those videos a million times. You don't have to keep coming back to this specific one and trying to find it within the sew along. You can just have a library of those ready to go whenever you need them. But the invisible zipper gets placed right sides together with your fabric like so and you're putting in your invisible zipper foot and you're going to stitch all along here. Remember to have this raw edge finished in some way and then it gets turned to the inside like this and you have a really beautiful finished zipper. So you're going to stitch it all the way down on this side and then you do this number. Hold on, make sure it's flat and then you go flip once, flip twice and now this goes in here and you're paying extra careful attention that your waist seams are matching up across the zipper and that your neckline matches up across the zipper as well. All right, so my best tip for getting the waist seams matched up is to zip up your zipper and where the waist seam crosses this other tape you just put a little snip so you can get them sort of lined up and then you come through and you're only stitching this and then testing. If it doesn't match, rip it out, test again, so on and so forth. All right, and then like I said, you're coming in here and you're checking to see if they line up. Mine are off by an amount that nobody will notice but us. So then I sit here for five or ten minutes and I determine is that enough of an error to fix and if so then you just unzip your zipper, remove your basting stitches and try again. So it's just a little bit of a trial and error. I can already tell that I'm off because my little doodad isn't, my little snip isn't in the right place. So I am going to redo this one but you give yourself grace and do the best that you can and remember that only we notice most of our mistakes. Most everybody else doesn't pay any attention to this stuff. All right, and see after just two goes, there we go, I've got it. Now the next problem that I usually run into is getting the neckline to match up. Even if this is in place, there's still a lot of shifting that can happen. So good thing we already stay stitched our neck edge. That's going to give us a good idea of where the five-eighths inch mark is above that stitching. So I'm going to just kind of eyeball it. But again, you throw this in here and kind of mimicking what you did on this side. You should have your zipper stop just at the like very, very edge of that stay stitching so that when you go to put your facing on it just barely grazes over it. All right, and this is what we've got. It looks really good. So now I can finish up the rest of the zipper filling in the gaps. So zipper install is done. Now we're going to finish the lower edge. Pop this off, put your regular zipper foot on, and you're putting it on like the right hand rung. Fold your zipper tape away from the garment as best you can. All of this gets pulled up and out of the way. So use some clips if you need to. You can do whatever you want way over here on the side. I don't really have any clips. I mean, I have some pins. Let's see. Just to keep it out of the way for sure, like so. Okay, so and right where you stopped sewing your zipper, you are going to start sewing this. And so your little zipper foot like groove goes kind of in there. Drop your needle. You should be pretty close to it. If not, then it just needs to be flatter, meaning this needs to be pulled out. Yeah. And you can also move this is as far right as this needle goes on this machine. So straight stitch a couple stitches, back stitch, and then come down a couple of inches just until you can get a good view of your 5 eighths again. Lift all this up, take this out, put on your regular foot, and continue sewing down the rest of your seam. Okay, zipper is in. It's definitely one of those things that takes practice, but with practice, you do get a lot better at it. And taking your time to do those extra few steps and not just like, you know, saying a prayer and hoping for the best, but really taking control over the results really does make a big difference. So okay, so the facing, we are at steps 11, 12, 13, 14. Yeah, 11 through 14. You should already have your interfacing applied. And we are going to attach our interfacing pieces to themselves, the back to the front. And then we're also going to finish the outer edges of it as well. All right, so just making sure you have your pieces aligned, your little arrows are going to or your notches are going to be matching up. So it's the more narrow end of your back facing gets applied to the more narrow end of your front facing. And since this is something that's getting turned to the inside, I don't have to worry about doing French seams. You're never going to see them. So I'm just going to apply this here. Again, you're going to have one of those funky little triangles. But remember, so long as you've got your five eighths through here, you are good to go. So those get sewn together. And then when you go to your machine, if you're doing the him method, yeah, the instructions even tell you to stitch along at a quarter inch seam allowance, and then turn under along that seam line, it just kind of acts as a kind of like perforation a little bit and just makes it easier for you to turn that under. You are also going to come in here and stitch along this stitching line just to kind of reinforce that we're going to end up cutting through. So be prepared. And then you're also going to stitch along your seam line here at the bottom, matching up with that big dot and then trimming this away to three eighths of an inch. So if you have five eighths inch seam allowances, you're trimming off a quarter inch. All right, to the machine. Okay, the facing is done. We're ready to apply this to the dress at this point. And your facing goes on like this. So you unroll your zipper teeth, they get undone. Then with the facing on like it should be this gets placed over the zipper tape, matching up with the raw edges. Then you're just coming down, matching your shoulder seam. And then any notches or markings that you have, you're also going to, but you put this in matching up the small dots, which is right there, small dot to small dot, like so now this one can go. And then you come back up the other end. And then matching up your shoulder seams again. The shoulder seam of the dress goes toward the back, like so see. And then this comes around again and you uncurl center back seam where the raw edges are matched up. Like so. And I'm pinning through the tape on this end. Okay, so we're going to go to our machine and we are going to stitch all the way around all of this, making sure to follow this, you know, the black mark that I made here, coming around the other end and coming here. And then I do this separately there. It looks like they're telling you to do it all in one, like come up here and around, but I will come around the whole interior of the neckline and then I'll do this separately just to make sure I get a nice crisp turn there. Okay, so that's the facing under stitch as far as you can. You can switch out to like a foot that has some kind of guide on it. If you want to really get close and even to your stitching, I just tend to eyeball it for under stitching and it usually works out. But just take your time as with everything. Always just making sure that we've got our seam allowances going toward the facing. And you notice I didn't trim my seam allowances. I tend to not do that either when under stitching because again, it just, to me, it provides better results in the end. That seam will roll under even more if you have some seam allowances. But if it's too bulky because of your fabric, I mean, this ball is very light weight, then go ahead and trim these back. That's fine. Let's see. Now the under stitching is going to cause that seam line to roll to the inside to where you can't see your seam line at all. Do the other side and I'll meet you at the table. Okay. So now that you've got your facing in, they want you to tack it down. So you're going to tack it at this center front seam. Okay, you're going to tack it down at your shoulder seam. And it's basically stitching in the ditch. Now they're telling you to do it by hand. And if you've ever seen one of my Sew Alongs, you know that ain't happening over here. So I'm just going to go to my machine and do a few stitches forward, a few back, right along that little groove there. And then, oh, so the bottom part of this facing, I thought it was going to be some kind of like magical, cool thing. It's not, it's pretty not exciting actually. Okay. So once you have that tacked down, all you do is you turn this under along your little stitching. Oh, you probably need to clip this. And they're going to have, you do that by hand. You hand stitch that down. There you have it. So I'll probably pin, I'll probably leave it like this, pin from the right side and again, stitch in the ditch along there just to get this down. Because again, I don't get out of needle and thread for many things. Okay. And then that'll be it for the facing. And we'll move on to the ruffle, which is okay. Yay. There she is in all her glory. The center front, again, I have to come in and trim all of the rogue threads. But this is how the facing looks.