 Hi you guys, Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside to Him. We are on week three of our McCalls 7405 Sew Along and today we're actually going to start working with our fabric. First things first, you all that have not washed your fabric yet must stop the video at this precise moment and put your fabric in the wash. It is mandatory. There's no way getting around it because I will not be held responsible if your garment gets distorted or doesn't fit after you wash it the first time after you've made it. So go wash your fabric according to the instructions that were at the end of your bolt or that were on the website. You may not be able to tell from this but I swear I ran an iron over this. Some parts are better than others but rayon is just a very temperamental fabric and if you don't run the iron over it exactly flat you'll get these little guys which I'm not too concerned with. I just don't want huge wrinkles in the fabric. So if you have your fabric washed welcome back. We are going to be following the cutting layouts on the pattern instructions. These are on page two and you basically just find the version of the dress that you are making. So I am making for all intents and purposes I'm making A except I'm adding the elastic casing and the belt from D and C respectively which I'll show you how to do on the cutting layouts. It's super simple but since the length that I'm making is length A and I'm not doing the curved hem and I'm not doing the maxi version then I am going to follow that mostly follow the cutting layouts of UA. Then you need to find the width of your fabric all right. That's what this first line is how wide your fabric is from selvedge to selvedge and the selvedge edge is the one that's finished by a machine. So machine finishes this edge and then it's all wrapped around a bolt and then whoever cut your fabric cuts this edge and this is the cut raw edge of your fabric. So you're trying to find the selvedge edge sometimes it has like writing on it something like that. So when you find your selvedge edge you match them up selvedge to selvedge your cut ins will be on either side so selvedge is here one cut end over here and one cut end over here and then you have your fabric folded in half right sides together right sides of the fabric together you lay it out you I had this all organized earlier and then you ruffle out any you just press out with your hands any little bumps or wrinkles that you might have also it is a partly cloudy day which is why I'm getting all these sunspots so I apologize about that but I can't control the weather um so bear with me on that okay so that is what this has illustrated here you can see we have a piece of fabric with the selvedge edges together and the fold on one end here's my fold opposite the end of my selvedge edge so I want to make sure I have my fabric laid out just like they explain it sometimes they'll have you fold the selvedge edges to meet in the middle so you have two folds one on either side or they'll have you like fold in one edge a few inches and the other one is laid out completely flat there are all kinds of different versions of this but mostly for this garment you have your fabric folded in half with the right sides of the fabric touching and all of that all of what these shading and these dots and all that is all explained in this chart here okay so I do not have 45 inch width fabric I have 60 and this is width or without nap that's the next line and nap is like direction of the shading of the fabric so the best way to explain it is if you think of velvet or if you think of sequins and you know how if you run your hand one way on velvet it changes color and it's darker and if you run it this way it's like lighter well if you cut your fabric without keeping nap in mind you could have pieces that look darker than other ones simply because the direction of the nap so you have something that has like that kind of texture to it you would need to pay attention to that well actually on this pattern it doesn't matter but on some of them it does so just make note if you're ever working with a velvet or sequins or fringe or anything that has like a direction to the texture just to make note of whether or not this is with or without nap okay and then it tells you that this illustration is for extra small small and medium and then this illustration is for large extra large and extra extra large so depending on which size you're making you will need to do a different layout so technically I'm making a medium but the width of my pieces are that of like a large or extra large because I added all of that width to the hip remember so I'm most likely going to have to do a version like this and then what you're also going to have to do is go to uh you see oh here is C's belt so you see you have piece three here well we have our piece three but you also have a piece four so I'm going to try and mimic this and I'm going to do piece four somewhere around here like this and then if I go to D with the elastic casing I just want to make sure there's not an extra piece of fabric for the casing and there's not there's just one two and three so that should be all I need is just to draw in that extra piece for somewhere along here like this just mimicking sort of how they've done it down here in C's illustration okay so now we want to bring out our pattern pieces I have piece two one two three and four to make the version I'm making we're going to put three and four to the side for now and let's also put two to the side and only work with piece one which looks like this okay remember we took width out of the waist or length out of the waist length from the bottom we added to our hip and if you'll notice on the pattern we have this little thing here center front on fold with this little arrow pointing to this line and that means we are going to be placing literally that line of the pattern directly on the fold of the fabric okay so we've got our fold of the fabric there and I'm going to try and place it on one line on the grid just to make sure that it's as straight as I can possibly get it this is the sort of tricky part about working with drapery fabrics is that they can be kind of shifty you know they can tend to want to move around a lot but with a little bit of patience you can get it there all right and then you're laying that line directly on the fold of the fabric and you've got your the top which you guys can't see but the top of the pattern piece is placed near the edge of the fabric but obviously not going over you can leave like an inch up there or whatever you need all right okay now here's your next step and that is making sure that this pattern piece does not go anywhere I like to use these they're little hex tiles that I got at the hardware store they came on like a mesh sheet and I pulled them off and used Gugon and got all that glue away I like them because they're small they have funny little corners which will help you get into the corners of smaller pattern pieces but they still have a little bit of weight to them I will have a link in the description box for where you can get these but you can just go to your local hardware store and just get whatever they have but I'll leave this exact one if you like my marble but you're going to lay them sporadically around the edge making sure to keep the fold line directly on the fold of the fabric I like to do this edge first all the way down to my hem and then I like to take my hand and press out this way that way you've got a smooth pattern piece on top of a smooth piece of fabric that's why it's important to press your fabric but also press your pattern pieces all right so you're doing that all the way around your other option if you don't have those and don't want to go get them is you can obviously put pins in your um to hold it in so you would just put pins all around but you can see like if all of these weren't here the reason why I don't like pins too much is because when you pick up like that it moves everything around you know and now there's also like a little itty bitty bubble there and yes I'm getting a little bit nitty nitpicky on this which you don't necessarily have to be super picky because this is a very generous pattern nothing too fitted like if your cut line isn't exact it's not going to destroy your garment but I do want you guys to keep these things in mind as you're sewing progresses and you might want to level up on your pattern weights or just you know how you go about cutting out your fabric all right once you've got all that down and your um pattern piece is perfectly flat on your perfectly flat fabric then you need to pick a cutting tool again we have options option one is a scissor I use chi scissors k a i they are gorgeous high quality fabric shears meant for cutting fabric meant for sewing you get a really smooth line when you use good quality scissors I will have a link in the description box with a coupon code if you want to pick up a pair of chi scissors I really really love them your other option is to use a rotary blade and this is something that rolls along the edge of your fabric and that little blade is what cuts the fabric personally this is ideal for lightweight drapey fabrics because like I mentioned before with the pins if you're using scissors you inevitably have to lift the fabric up in order to make your next cut but when you're using a rotary blade you literally just roll it along and you never move the fabric and you never move the pattern piece itself so light drapey fabrics I prefer a rotary blade most anything else I will use my garment shears personal preference use what you've got for this project especially for those of you who are very new to sewing if you've been making quilts before you probably are very very familiar with this if you've been making bags before maybe you're more familiar with this so just use what you've got for this um but get quality versions of either or okay so then all right now we're ready to cut so I'm going to be using my rotary blade and I'm going to cut around all of the lines of the garment I like to keep the rotary blade all or my scissors whatever I'm using to cut on the outside of the fabric and my body is on the inside of the cut line does that make sense to me it's easier control it's more precise and I just feel like I get a better cut that way all right she is completely cut out remember you're not cutting this edge this is on the fold and that stays folded and you never cut that you're only cutting out the top neckline what will be like our little armhole the side seam and the bottom hem all right next step are all of these little pattern markings so we have what do we have a little double notch here nothing on the top and then a little circle dot here if you're making view c that's for that's like where your slit will end and then if you're making view d with the elastic casing then you need to draw in this whole solid line okay so the little what are they called notches are pretty straightforward um you just snip right into them I like to just snip little snips like this but if you want to cut out the entire triangle you can but I think this does just what it needs to do I'm not making view c so I don't need to make this um circle dot but if I were and if I did need to make that then I would smooth this all back out then I would take a pin put the pin through the size that I'm making the corresponding circle then I would take a marking pin and I would carefully lift up the pattern piece and reveal where the pin has gone in we're talking barely see that um where the pin has gone into the fabric let me try and move this I don't advise moving your pattern and fabric while you're cutting not not a good move but for the purposes of video and this tutorial I will do it for you guys okay then I draw a circle around the pin where it went in like so then I will flip it to the wrong side or to the other side and draw another circle around okay but remember you only need to do that if you're making view c okay it says right here for c right side only okay all right next up would be how are we going to get this line transferred to our fabric well they have a they have a gadget for that too because there's a gadget for everything you will quickly learn if you haven't already lay this all back down like it was okay so it's called tracing paper and a tracing wheel link in the description box for where you can find these if you don't have them already there's two versions of the tracing wheel one is solid and one has these little like bumps in it uh I kind of like the bumpy one and then you want to find in the kit will come yellow paper blue paper and white I think yeah white paper uh so you want to use yellow and dark colors blue on light colors and then I hardly ever use the white to be perfectly honest okay now when you open it up it looks like this all right you will need to shimmy this under your fabric gently like so I think we'll have to do it in two parts anyway let me see maybe not let's pull this out and weave it and it's got a shimmy down some you're trying to get it centered over um that placement line while also keeping your fabric flat and your pattern flat too we bit tricky but it can be done we've got something like that now let me pull this out a little bit and fold this over the fold all right so oh on the underside of the underside of the pattern piece so that it gets transferred onto the fabric again make sure I've got this all in the right place perfect so now you just take your tracing wheel and you trace over this little line making sure to follow you know the right size so I'm making medium so I am drawing in that line for medium like so and then I will pick this up again can you see the blue line there it's very faint which is fine you don't need it to be like super dark you just need it to be visible while you're sewing so that you can keep that placement in mind whenever you're laying down your casing so I will finish off the other half to make sure I get the right the other side of the fabric as well all right there we go that is all we need to do for piece one we've got our whole piece cut out we've got our notches made we've got our casing marked on both sides can you all see that that line that goes through right here on both sides and piece one is ready to go so what I'll do now is I will gently fold this all up try not to mess with us with it too much and set it aside while I work on piece two okay one thing to note for the back piece while I'm working on it is since there isn't a fold line this is actually a cut line there's no indication with the little arrows that this should be placed on the fold of the fabric so we're going to cut around all sides of this one so you need to make sure that this piece is straight on your fabric and that it's not like all wonky and the way to do that is to use this grain line this vertical line here is marked on every pattern that you need that doesn't have that is not cut on the fold and that needs to be perfectly equidistant from the edge of your fabric you can use the folded edge or the selvedge edge whichever is easier for you but you'll get a large ruler and you will line this up and you'll say okay that's at the one inch mark and this is at the 11 and a half inch mark and so then you'll move it down and you'll put this on the one inch mark and you'll make sure that this is at the 11 and a half inch mark and if it is not then you need to adjust this back or forth depending on how far off you are just to make sure this is this line is perfectly parallel to the line of the edge of your fabric so my piece two is totally done i marked this little dot here which everyone will have to do this is a mark for everybody clipped my dots marked my placement line for view d and i am done with this so remember i still have two additional pieces to cut and that is for the belt and the drawstring the neck drawstring so all of you should also be cutting the drawstring with me everybody needs that neck drawstring so i am going to use what's left over here from cutting out um that last piece just going to straighten it out put it back on a line so i know it's perfectly straight and then i'm going to take my belt piece for like so in my neck band neck drawstring piece c like so and again these all have grain lines on them and so you want to measure this line and make sure that it's perfectly parallel to the fold of the fabric you do that every single time without fail because if you don't and you then you end up with a crooked um piece it's either off-grain so stretchy in some places and not stretchy in other places or your stripes are going all wonky if you have a striped fabric there's a variety of things that can come from not measuring your grain line every time and it is finicky because we're working with these like troublesome fabrics but it's important okay so now i've got piece four on there pretty darn good if i say so myself so i'll go ahead and cut out four and then or at least lay these down for four and then i'll use the grain line of four to measure for the grain line of three you know work smarter not harder so get that line all matched up carefully remove the ruler okay now i've just got these last two rectangles to cut out don't forget to also clip your notches and we be rocking and rolling all right you guys i have my four pieces that i need to make this garment i've got one two and three from dress a and then i also have the belt from c which is exactly what i wanted but that doesn't necessarily mean we're done cutting yet we need to make sure that there's no interfacing and if there were there'd be a separate box here with interfacing and it would have the various um dress versions and so we don't have any of that so that's good interfacing is like a stabilizer it's just something that helps keep things sturdy when you need them to be sturdy but this is a light flowy drapey garment so i guess we don't need any of that so that means we are done cutting out our fabric hopefully you feel very confident in this part i know it can be a little bit like oh my gosh i just spent all this money on this fabric and now i'm about to cut it into pieces but hopefully this makes you feel a little bit more confident if you're still not confident go get something cheap from the clearance been and just do it once and you'll feel a little bit better and maybe more confident about um cutting into your fashion fabric in fact you can buy that cheaper fabric and make the whole dress you know and see where you stand that's called a muslin and it's very common um i do it sometimes if i'm making a garment i'm not super confident about still it happens so know where you are cut into your fashion fabric or go get something super cheap you can get a sheet from goodwill drapery really anything um and just start cutting and get more confident in um kind of the feel for it all but hopefully um by the this time next week you will have all of your fabric cut out and we'll be ready to sew because we are gonna do steps one through nine i think yeah we're gonna do one through well i don't have the rest of them i only go through five but i think one through nine so we'll actually have some sewing to do finally for a sew along and i'll see you all back here very soon bye