 Hi you guys, Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside the Hymn. Hello and welcome to week three of our sew-along for National Sewing Month featuring M7991. If you missed weeks one and or two, I will have links for those two videos in the description so be sure to check that out so you can get all caught up. We've already discussed the pattern itself, which fabrics you should be buying for this pattern, which size you should cut out, and cutting out the pattern pieces. We've already done all of that. Today, week three, we are going to be sewing this puppy together, which is great. I have said before, I am making the dolman sleeve version, dolman sleeve bodice with the flair skirt, and I just took a peak see through the instruction booklet, and there are a whopping 15 steps to making that version of the dress. So I'm not going to spend too much time here talking with you guys, but there are some things that you need to do before you start sticking your fabric into your sewing machine. First things first, is you need to change your needle. I know. I'm going to be using a ballpoint and okay, I have to preface this. This little guy, this machine needle organizer, is amazing. I know it's really fantastic. Sadly, it's discontinued and I'm really sorry about that. You can email dritz and tell them to please make another one because it's really, really awesome. But I'm not going to use another sewing machine needle organizer just because it's available to you guys. I'm going to use the one that I know and that I love. Okay, so your options for needles are a ballpoint slash jersey needle. That is if you are using a lightweight drapey knit fabric, which I suspect a lot of us are. The other option is a stretch needle. Stretch needle can work for some of the more thicker knits, some of the more stable knits, so on and so forth. I am going to be using a ballpoint jersey needle. And then within the ballpoint jersey category, as well as the stretch category, there are different sizes of needles, literally how big the needle is. So if your fabric is super, super lightweight, then you're going to choose the smallest size. If it's a heavier weight jersey or knit, then you're going to choose a larger size. And again, this is all relative to within the category of ballpoint slash jersey needles. What I mean by that is, for example, if you're using a denim needle, denim needles or leather needles, another good example, size 70 leather needles are going to be used on a lightweight leather fabric. The light weightness of it is relative to the leather or to the denim or to the jersey. So a lightweight jersey needle is going to be smaller still than a lightweight leather needle. I hope that makes sense. So pick your needle based on the kind of fabric that you have. The lighter weight it is, the jersey categories, the, you know, slipperyness of it will be in the lighter range. And then the more stable we get, like the cotton jerseys, the lightweight panties, well that would probably be a stretch needle. The cotton, like, more stable jerseys are going to be on the higher end. I doubt any of us are using a fabric that would require anything higher than an 80. And all that said, as soon as you start sewing your fabric, you'll know if you picked a needle that's too big, because your needle will skip or the tension will be off, it'll be really funky. So you'll know right away as soon as we start sewing, if you've chosen the right needle or not. If you have a cover stitch or a serger, then you're going to need to put the needles in all of those machines. So as many as five needles for one knit project, I know that's kind of annoying, but that's the way it goes. So for most of us, I think we're going to be using the sewing machine and the serger because serging with sewing with knits without a serger can be done. Don't get me wrong, but you're just not going to get the results that you really love. It's going to look very homemade, especially on the inside. So I recommend using a serger. That's what I will be using. But if you don't have a serger, feel free to just sew it on your sewing machine, trim your seam allowances. You don't even need to use a pinking shear because knits don't unravel. So just trim it down and move about your life. I don't recommend French seams or Hong Kong seams or any of that with these types of knits that we're using for this dress here. Okay. So get all your machines set up. Obviously get them threaded as well. Okay. And with all that, I think we can go ahead and start with step number one. So I'll meet you over at the cutting table slash prep table and show you what that looks like and we'll get to sewing. We have all of our pattern pieces here and I am going to lay them out. This is how I would normally set up my sewing table when I'm actually sewing something. Put the instructions nearby and then I kind of start to lay these all out with the pattern piece on top and the number visible so that I can easily grab what I need quickly. I can just look down at the table and go, oh, there's piece number five. You know what I mean? So you just lay them all out like so and then we'll leave our two skirts like that. Okay. So step one, this is step one is going to be to work on our bodice. So some of you, there's two different bodices and two different skirts. So I am making the bodice for view C. As we have discussed, I am making this bodice with the skirt from A. You may be making some other variation of this dress using the different bodices and skirts for you. You can be making this bodice with the slim skirt. You can be making this bodice with the sleeve, with the flair skirt, lots of different options for you. So just make sure to pay attention to which bodice you're working on. For those of us who are making view C, I'm going to skip down to step number two and that is to pin the bodice front and bodice back at the shoulder right here and overarm edges, which I guess is what this is. Maybe it's supposed to mean underarm edges. I don't know. Pin front to back at, oh, this is a shoulder and overarm. One seam for two terms. I got you now. And then pin front to back at side and underarm edges. Now, I'm going to be running this through my serger. So I'm only going to stitch it once. For those of you that don't have a serger, you stitch at the stitch line, 5 eighths inch away from the raw edge and then you stitch again, 1 quarter inch away from that. So you're going to be doing a 5 eighths inch seam allowance and then a 3 eighths inch seam allowance. And then you'll trim close to the 5 eighths inch, I'm sorry, the 3 eighths inch stitching. So that makes sense. So you just trim close to the stitching that's furthest closest. For what am I trying to say? You trim the stitching that is closest to the raw edge and then press the seam allowances toward the back. If you're working on a serger, you're going to do this as well. All right, so that's pretty straightforward. So we take some of this out of the way. We take bodice front like so and you're trying to, as best you can, mimic this picture. So they have the bodice back actually face up on their table. And you know all of this because see how the bodice back here is like shaded in. And in our little, oh sorry, fabric key right here, the shaded in circle is the right side of the fabric. So you know that the back side is piece four is right side up and then the wrong side of fabric is a solid white. So that means you know the front pieces, piece three are face down, making a right sides together situation for our bodice. So open up the bodice like so. The fabric looks so good. Okay. I cannot wait to wear this emerald green color. All right, so do that and then find the, oh it goes like this. Okay, you have to find the center front of your front pieces because your front doesn't have a neckline. I mean it does, but not like connected like this. So you lay it out just like the picture and or like the illustration here's our other one. And so you get an idea of it looking like, hold on that's not right either. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Okay. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Now it looks just like the illustration does and we are going to pin and sew and I talked about this little trick for beginners in previous sew alongs, but basically what I like to do is take it one sentence at a time. Pin bodice front to bodice back at shoulder and overarm edges. Period. Stop reading. Don't read anything else. Really helps you like break it down so that you can easily interpret what it's asking you to do. So we have all those notches that we snipped, remember? And so the notches should be matching up. The raw edges should be matching up. And then you just pin along. Again, if you're doing this on a serger, you do want, you want to pin perpendicular to your seam that you're going to be sewing that way. Your serger doesn't accidentally run over any of your pins, break your serger knife, break the pin, have things ricocheting towards your face. Ask me how I know. Ask me how I know that. It's a hard lesson. It's a hard lesson, but I learned it eventually. So now I will teach it to all of you. It does happen. You think, oh, I'm paying so much attention. I'll never run over a pin. Lies. Lies you tell yourself to be lazy. All right. So you can tell we're just pinning across the seam. I'll do the other side, head to the serger and sew this guy. So here we have our back sewn to our front. And I also wanted to point out that I am using white serger thread because the wrong side of my fabric matches white better. If I used thread that matched this, then that would be very contrasting on the inside. So anytime a knit is printed, which is a lot of time, I will match the inside rather than the outside. So just a little like, you know, make your insides look good tip. Also, I wanted to show you this. I made all that fuss about my serger knives and look how dull they were. This was my little test to make sure the serger threads were, you know, going to work properly. I always do it on a scrap of fabric before I actually do my main fabric and look at what a mess. And then I changed them and this was the very next test I did. So PSA change your serger knives. It's really super simple to do and very, very cheap. The knives are not very expensive at all. Okay, so now we have our shoulder and overarm seam sewn. So we go back to our instructions. The second sentence says pin front to back at side and underarm edges. So now that is going to be these seams here, side and underarm edges. So I will pin those, surge those and we'll have a nearly completed bodice. Up is our neck band, which is a lot of fun. So the neck band is piece number five. And I have that right here all laid out. And they want us to sew the, like the straight edge of it together. If you cut out your band, right sides together, then you're already set and ready to go. And you can just zip this part through your serger. And then when you're done with that, they want you to fold it along the full line, matching all the symbols that you made along the way. And they are not recommending that you interface it, which is surprising to me. I guess because the band was cut on the straight edge, they think that it's not going to stretch out that much. But there still seems to be a lot of stretch to me. I'm debating. Certainly if you have a lightweight, like a jersey fabric, I would think you would want to interface it just so it doesn't like flop around. So I'd rather be safe than sorry. I have some knit interfacing. So I'm going to go ahead and interface these pieces as well. Sew them and then press them in half. And I'll meet you back here to show you what that looks like and show you how to pin it accurately to your bodice. And now you guys are going to ask, I use interfacing from Fashion Sewing Supply. You get it online. This is the Pro Tree Co Deluxe All-Bias Stretch Knit Fusible Interfacing. Looks like this and it's stretchy as you can see. And it's perfect for knits, very lightweight. I love it. So I'll have a link in the description box for that if you want to check some of that out. Okay, but here is our beautiful neck band. Isn't she stunning? So now we're going to pin the neck band right sides together with our lovely bodice. And this is the same step no matter which version you're making. So we're all following along together at this point. All right, and keep one side kind of out of the way and rotate it around. And again, I'm kind of just trying to mimic what they've done in a little illustration here. But you need to find your notches again. Notches are oh so important when it comes to knits. So I've got one notch here and I found the notch on the neck band. And then I'm going to put in a pin to hold those two things together. And then you come down here. And this is when it gets a little bit funk-a-dunk or does it? It might be upside down. Hold on. Okay, so I think I found a small little error. That's okay. It's fine. We're going to figure it out. But basically what I don't, I can't quite figure out what went wrong. It might be me. It might be them. But like if this were the right side, like the diagram, see I've done it the right way. But even if I did it the wrong way, sorry, I'm just kind of, now the wrong way works. Where it would be, yeah, I think that they accidentally flipped it thinking it would be right sides together or something. What's supposed to happen is that this little angled edge is supposed to match up to the angled edge of your waistband. And that is not happening. They're opposites of each other. So, and I even tried doing the other side, you know, the other thing, but they're exact matches. So that's not going to work either. That's okay. If yours is the same way as mine, just line up your seam allowance. Like where these two things intersect should be at five eighths inch, five eighths of an inch. So you can check that by taking your seam gauge and putting the edge at five eighths and at five eighths again and making sure they intersect there. Mine's a little bit big. So I'm going to inch it up closer. Okay, that's at five eighths. And that's at five eighths. Perfect. All right, you just want to make sure you have the right amount of negative ease. See how the bodice is a little bit bigger than the band and you have to pull the band tight in order for it to come together. That's what you want. That's going to ensure that your band hugs your body and doesn't like fly away. Okay, let's remember to do parallel. All right, perfect. And now the next one that I would come and find would be the back center back seam. So if you don't know where the center back seam is, you match up your shoulders like so try and be accurate and then pull a little snippy snip. Where those two match up in the center and that becomes your center back. If you can remember to do this when you're cutting out your project, you will be better than me because I can never remember to snip the center when I'm cutting something on the fold. I don't know why it just never never crosses my mind until I get to this point. And I'm like darn, I don't know where the back it where the center is. All right, then you line up your center back seam of your band with the center back little snip that you just made or maybe you made it previous. And then there should be another notch in here. Here's one. And that is going to match your shoulder seam, right? Did we draw it? Yeah, see how we drew in the triangle and we also snipped it. So that's going to be where your shoulder seam goes. Perfect. And then you kind of just evenly distribute. It's not a big difference between the bodice and the band, not big at all. So if you're feeling like you have to really stretch it, you probably cut something a little inaccurately, but you just kind of fill in the blanks with your pins and then do the exact same thing on the other side. Okay. And after you press your neck band with the seam allowances toward the bodice and the band pressed out, isn't she gorgeous? I am so thrilled with how this is turning out. I am really loving this little happy accident I had with my fabric and I am loving it. Okay. So we are going to skip all of this arm hole, arm sleeve business, because our sleeves for view C are already sewn on. These are our sleeves. Did you even realize you sewed on a sleeve? So we don't have to worry about setting in a sleeve. If you are doing the view B that has the sleeve or view A that has the sleeveless where they're having you turn it in, you can check my previous sew-alongs where I instruct you or I show you how to do a sleeve. It's very straightforward. If those sew-alongs are using a woven, but you can, it's the same technique for a knit. So follow along with that. This view A, you literally just press in the seam allowance and stitch around it. You could either use a cover stitch machine or your regular sewing machine. That's easy peasy. Okay. So let's talk sleeve band. This little guy can get a little bit confusing because we've got a fold line here and we're folding it in half and then in half again. So it's like which fold line is this? The first step is to fold it in half right sides together to get the seam that's going to be along here. And then the second half is to fold that in on itself so that you can attach it to the garment. So which way does this get folded first? And also I wanted to point out too that these notches are a little bit misleading because it says that there are three, but there's really only two. One, two. The ones that are over here somewhere are missing. So that's a little bit frustrating. So how do you know which way to go? This fold line here is what will ultimately make the cuff attachable to your garment. So these are going to be your raw edges where it says stretch. Those are your raw edges that it gets attached to your bodice. So this first step when we're going to be folding it right sides together to make the actual round cuff is going to be this way. And then once you have that all sewn together, then you fold it in on itself along the fold line and now you have a cuff. And that's going to start to make a lot more sense as soon as we start sewing. So first things first is to fold and I need to think about it again. Fold this over right sides together. So let's just do it this way where it goes right sides together like this because I mean this is a technically it's a rectangle. It's like a quarter inch different. So that's why it matters. That quarter inch may not seem like it's a big deal, but it does make a difference. So and you can see I left some of my selvage in here on accident. Thankfully it's not larger than 5 eighths of an inch. That's going to get chopped off by the surgeon here right now. Okay, so this is the one that's supposed to have some notch along here. If you want to save yourself you can like for next time you can go ahead press this flat and make your own notch like straw in your own notch somewhere just so that you can tell yourself next time that there needs to be another notch here. I don't know if you ever want to make it again. Okay, so now we've got two identical pieces. No notches are matching this time. The notch that is right here and right here does not have a match on the other side. There's no notch there. So hopefully that all makes sense and you have folded yours the right way. Let me sew these and then press them, press that seam and then I'll come show you how this these notches end up coming into play. So now we've got this and we need to flip these what would be along the fold line that's marked on the pattern and at this point those two notches should come together. Yep. All right, so match up your seam lines like so and then your notches are now matching. So your notches match once you make this little tube into more of a cuff. Isn't that cute? And then you can kind of test it out and see how snug it's going to be on your arm. I can't remember where's the um yeah so hers is hanging down quite low so it's not even this is such a cute look. What do you guys think? It's like an elbow cuff. Hers are like down to here but that's okay because it allows for some scrunching moments. You can scrunch it up some. You just want to test it make sure it's comfortable because once you get this sewn on then it's kind of not too fun to un-sew it. Okay and after you get a cuff pinned you can run it through your regular sewing machine like a basting stitch just to hold all of that closed or you can be a little bit of a rebel and just go for it. If you have it pinned it should be fairly stable but you basically take your sleeve end of your bodice and you stick it in through the tube where the folded end of the tube is over here and all the raw edges of the sleeve and the cuff are all in the same place. You can do a better job of starting out by matching the seam of the cuff to the under seam of the bodice that way you can't see it very well and then match up the raw edges pin and go surge it all together. You should have a notch hold on hold on wait a minute okay now I've got it I think it was twisted the first time something was twisted keep it the same there's a notch that's going to help you with this there's a notch on the sleeve that needs to be matched up to Lord have mercy I did it backwards again hold on I need to make sure I'm doing this right where's the notch okay there's the seam the notches match no match like this so then they match like this they don't match if you had the notches match then your seams on the top we don't want that do we that seems dumb no the seam goes under the seam goes with the under seam oh I bet it goes on this side okay sorry sorry all right if your notches are not matching I swear I've done this before if your notches are not matching then go to the other sleeve and then they will I promise okay that makes a ton of sense now great my brain is fried okay now we should be in business where's the notch Lord help me if these notches don't go together they don't go together with the seam on top oh my goodness you guys I hope this is at least comical maybe in some way like oh look it happens to her too yes I make stupid stupid mistakes all the time thankfully though these are just I'm not actually sewing yet so that's good okay now we've got everything in line yes the notches they match okay sometimes when you've been sewing for a while and like we found the mistake with the neckband you just kind of sometimes start to think oh here's another mistake it's them not me but then you really have to take a second and be like wait wait wait wait what is going on maybe it is me and then sometimes it's me sometimes it's them okay and we're going to be stretching this uh band the I'm sorry stretching the bodice to match the um the seam on the underarm and the one singular notch that we've got there so I think I have about three pins in maybe I'll do another one over on this side just to be on the safe side all right perfect so you guys got it now get the notches to match if they don't try the other sleeve and you'll have more luck then um so so along all around this circle do the same thing to the other side and press it all right our sleeve cuffs are done how cute are they um and now you have a completely finished bodice but you've got to you know these will get overlapped um but you have your little top of your bodice so fun now take these center fronts like this and pin them in place I don't think at this point we're doing a ton of stretching like we did on the neckband we kind of want it to lay nice and flat same with the other side okay perfect and then just go to your regular sewing machine if you're using a searcher and just baste those two things together while we are over there we can go ahead and work on our skirt as well so I'm just going to put this to the side oh it's looking so good okay uh uh skirt skirt skirt here we are hey step number 18 pin skirt front and back together at sides matching notches excellent we can handle that so I don't know what is about to happen with this lining in here it is like I don't know what time is it no idea but it's not late and we're already losing sun it's so sad but it's a sign of the fall okay I can handle this perfect so it should be pretty straightforward you've got you know a big triangle of a skirt just like the illustration you imagine all of this kind of pulled out of the way um and then you're just gonna sew this seam over here and this seam over here in the same method that we used for like the bodice shoulders all right so now we've got our skirt sewn at the side seams and we've got our bodice completely done as well with the little basting stitch um stitched into hold the little overlapy thing together I put a pin in the pattern piece that was the front because the front and the back of this skirt look identical um so you can do like this you can put some tape you can even write the pattern number pattern piece number however you want to do it just notate the front from the back somehow I like to lay the front of the skirt facing up like so and then I have the front of the bodice also facing up and then I insert the bodice into the skirt like so I also have my center front clipped which if you remember we already line we already lined those up with um the overlapping pieces so we know where that is so we have our center front matched and then now we also have these other little notches here that are going to line up with the notches on the front of our skirt and then as we go around our side seams are going to be matched up like so and then coming around again we've got two more notches to come together now we're on the back of the skirt and the back of the bodice and another notch here if you remembered to notch your center back you would have had a third one somewhere I don't know in here somewhere this is not like the neckband where you had to stretch one to fit the other these should fit like a glove like everything should just be matching up so perfectly and I'm putting my pins in perpendicular to the raw edge because we're about to make a little casing for some elastic and this is just going to help hold the dress up help you know take some of the tension off of the waist seam and also off of the shoulders but it's also going to hold it to your body a little bit better so I even wrote on the instructions as I was reading through them do not cut seam allowance stitch at five eighths then surge it's very very important that you don't just run to your serger and surge off all your seam allowance because then you won't have any thing for the casing to go into so we're going to take this over to the regular sewing machine stitch a five eighths inch seam do not trim it at all for those of you that are using a serger you're just going to surge along the raw edge for those of you that are using your sewing machine exclusively you are going to stitch another stitch a quarter inch away from the raw edge so everybody will have a stitch at five eighths and then sewing machine users are going to have a stitch a quarter inch away from the raw edge and then serger people are going to surge the raw edge so let's go do it so now we've got our waistband sewn I did want to tell you you need to remember to leave a little opening on the raw edge not the stitch seam but the other one so that you can insert your casing so leave a little bit of a space there you need to measure some knit elastic I'm using this stuff from Dritz that I got at Joanne's the knit elastic and you measure it to be your waist measurement plus an inch that's pretty straightforward and then you just insert a safety pin into the end like so and then we will begin threading it into our waistband just like this and you just ease it in inch by inch until you get all the way around okay now that I've got it pulled to the end or through the other end I'm going to unclip this safety pin and attach it to the other side just to make sure none of this goes into that casing we do not want that at all and then you just kind of stretch the garment around the elastic until all of this goes away oh where'd our safety our safety pins all the way in there I would have lost it we can also pin to hold this in place extra double insurance that that's not going anywhere and you just need to get all of that elastic in there slowly slowly okay and we are going to call this close enough um so now we need to sew the elastic together and I like to overlap mine like so instead of doing it like this and here let me just trim this off where would it need to be trimmed hold on I certainly don't want to make it too small at this point let's just chop some of that off okay so instead of doing it um raw edges together like this and then sewing along here and then having this weird bulk I like to do it like this where they lay over each other flat and then I just zigzag all along where they're overlapping and then you pull you look it's going to lay on the inside and then you're going to stitch or surge that raw edge closed and the big reveal turn it right sides out find your shoulder seams and voila here is our super cute I love it so much um little dress all right perfect so now we can address the hem as you can tell if you are making the uh view a skirt the hem is a beast like an absolute beast not only is it very very long like the circumference is long but it's also on a curve meaning you can't just fold it up and go about your day as you begin to fold it up it is going to start folding over on itself because the raw edge is longer than your folded line like when you fold it in on your seam allowance this raw edge ends up being longer than whatever this measurement is and so every once in a while it's going to get a little pucker and it's really annoying so the way that if you want to hem this by all means please do so you would stitch a quarter of an inch basting stitch from the edge quarter inch from the edge all the way around and then you would begin to fold up your 5 eighths inch hem and you start to gently pull on those basting stitches and it's going to pull in this raw edge to make it a little bit smaller so that it starts to match the line that you're trying to hem it to it takes a very long time and it's very tedious and very annoying but by all means do it if you want to your other option is because this is a knit knit will never unravel so you could leave it raw you could just do nothing to it at all and leave it just like this that's also an option or you can take a smaller baby hem where the difference between the raw edge and whatever the hem line is isn't as different so you have some options choose which one you like for you with double brush poly I almost exclusively leave it raw so that's what I'm going to do you can leave it raw and then in a couple weeks whenever you're feeling up for it hem it then or leave it raw and if you decide you don't like it then hem it just choose what works for you but okay how fun was that we just sewed in an entire dress in one video I know this video is going to be very very long but I really need to get this so long done in four weeks um so here we are um but our dresses should be done or at least mine is done yours is maybe in progress of being done but it's super cute and I am super thrilled with how it turned out I will head out here shortly and get some modeled uh shots of me in my dress and show you all the final look next week next Saturday um and if you want to reveal your dress to the world along with me please feel free to do that it will be our big reveal party will be next Saturday that September 28th um and just post it on social media be sure to tag me I'm at inside the hem everywhere on the internet um so be so that I can make sure that I see it as well um and yeah we'll have a big fun time tomorrow looking at everyone's not tomorrow next week looking at everyone's dresses and seeing how awesome they all turned out um okay so that's going to do it for today and I will see you in the meantime but also definitely next Saturday for the big reveal of my version of McCall's 7991 see y'all then bye