 Hi you guys, Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside to Him. All right you guys, how are your dresses coming along? How did your sight seems turn out? What did you think of French seams if you had never made them before? Today we are going to be working on steps 16 through 24, which means we're going to be making the neckline drawstring, the little thing that goes through the neckline here to basically hold your dress onto your body, and then we're going to be doing the waistline casing, which will give us this little cinched in waist look. Now if this is optional, so if you didn't choose this for your dress, then steps 20 through 24 are not going to apply to you. Like if you're making A or B or any variation of length just without the waist line, then you don't need to worry about the waistline casing. That's just for those of us who are making the little cinched in waist definition dress version. All right, so this is going to be fairly straightforward. I think today we should be able to zip through this, but we need pattern piece number three. All right, so three is just a long rectangle. Looks like this. Let's move this out of the way. Keep in our instructions closed. Okay, so yeah, we've got pattern piece three and you can see here that there is a line that goes from one end all the way to the other. So we're going to need to make note of that line. There's also a little notch here on the end, on one end, but not the other. So our very first step is going to be to sew the two rectangles together at the notched end. So this end here that has the notch, we're going to sew them at a 5 eighths inch seam allowance. And we don't have to worry about finishing off the side seams or anything like that because this is going to end up being encased whenever we end up folding this and making it into like a like big tube basically. So the first step is to sew this at a 5 eighths inch seam allowance. All right, so I just put a couple pins into the edge there to keep it together, especially because my fabric is a little bit shifty. And then I'm going to line up the edge of the fabric with the 5 eighths inch little mark on the throat plate and drop my needle and sew it. Super simple. Now we're just going to press this open over at the iron. Okay, while we're over here, the next step is to fold this rectangle, what is it? Right sides together along the long end, like so. So you're going to have one long like skinnier rectangle. And I just want to press it very, very lightly. Again, because I have a shifty fabric, I just want to make sure that I can keep it as even as possible. And pins don't always do the best job of keeping it that way. So I just want to give it a very light press. I'm even going to knock my heat back like almost to off just to make sure I don't put like an actual crease in it, but that it kind of holds the little press that I want to put in. See what I'm talking about? It's not like a full-on crease. It's just a very gentle, gentle press. Okay, now that I've got that gentle press in, I am going to take my pins and I'm just going to throw a couple of pins in here just to try and keep that edge closed. And then we're going to head to the machine and sew along this raw edge at 5 eighths of an inch seam allowance. All right, so like I said, we are going to be sewing this raw edge at a 5 eighths of an inch seam allowance, but we're also going to be closing up the short ends as well. So while we're sewing, we need to leave an opening somewhere in here that we can reach in and pull it out, right sides out. So what I like to do is take, I don't know four or five inch little section, put a pin in vertically like so, and then put in another one. And this will just remind me of stopping and starting points. So I will sew this along this edge, then turn and start coming all the way down this raw edge here. And then when I get to my vertical pin, then I will back stitch and I'll stop sewing. And then I'll start again here back stitch and then continue sewing this side the same way. All right, so I have half of it sewn. I stopped at my vertical pin. I'm going to remove that and then I'm going to skip over this whole area. All of this is going to be open, you know, not sewn shut. And then I will start it here at this other vertical pin, drop my needle back stitch and sew the other side. All right, there we go. We have our little casing or a little drawstring sewn, except for this little section here. So let me take you back over to the table. We'll trim this and turn it right sides out. I'll show you some good ways to do that. Okay, we are at the very end of step number 17 where we trim these seam allowances. And basically you want to take your embroidery shears again or very small sharp scissors and you want to trim these seam allowances down to about a quarter of an inch. Okay, and when I get to the area where I have left the opening, what I'm going to do is trim that, but then I'm going to turn back into the seam allowance and leave the full 5-8 seam allowance for the opening. And that's just going to be easier for us to turn that in later and sew that part closed. So it almost makes this like, I don't know, plateau looking thing? Hello Earth Science. Um, so that'll make it easier for us later on just to leave that all that seam allowance there. All right, so we've got all those seam allowances trimmed now and this is what your drawstring should look like, something like this. Now we need to pull these little edges out through this little opening that we left. And for me the easiest way to use that is to do that is to use a bodkin. It looks like this minus metal and it has a ring on one end and this little like, I don't know, thingamabob. A little mermaid reference on the other end. Link in the description box for where you can find one of these. For one I remember they're very affordable. I might have had this one honestly since I first started sewing. I think it came in my like beginner sewing kit, but you basically pull it all the way to one end, then you work that thingamabob into the corner of the fabric, trying to hook it. It takes a minute but there you go. All right, so now we have that and we are going to pull the fabric around without it coming loose. Let's try again. Try to be gentle to not leave like a gigantic hole in your fabric, but at the same time you need it to be strong enough to hold the fabric on the end. There we go. I think I just felt it lock into place. Yep. All right, now you're just going to pull the fabric over the end of the bodkin like so. Being very gentle, you do not want this to come undone halfway through. And then once you get it through the other end, take the bodkin out and you can finish the job yourself. And what you're left with is a little number like this. Try and tuck that little, some threads come out. No big deal. Just try and tuck them back in and try and make this end as square as possible. And then you are going to end up, so after you finish the other side, then you go to your iron and you press this seam allowance. You press the seam allowance toward one edge, which is why we didn't want to put a huge press in the fold line because we need it to go the other way now. So you don't want to be working against yourself. So do the other end and then go press out that, press out the drawstring and then we'll be back here. All right, you guys, now we are on step 18. And 18 is going to have us close up our little opening that we made. So you have to turn these seam allowances into the casing, into the drawstring like so, like so, have it all even and all those turned down like so. And then it's going to have you hand stitch these closed like with a needle and thread. And I don't know about you, but I love hand stitching. And if you note, since I left my opening very close to the center of this drawstring, there's a really good chance it's going to end up inside the front casing. So technically, it'll never be seen if I do all of this correctly. So I'm going to very neatly and gently go to my sewing machine and just put in a couple of stitches, stitch along this edge and stitch it closed. It goes by 1000 times faster. And like I said, I'm sure you'll never see it. But if you're worried about being it being seen, feel free to grab a needle and thread and go ahead and whip stitch this little guy closed. But I'm going to the machine. I am going to go to the iron first though, and press this so that it stays nice and even in the machine. And then I'll stitch it closed. And then after that, we're gonna be feeding it through the dress. So we're getting very close to being able to like try this on, which is a lot of fun. So I'll meet you back here. All right, you guys, this is a very, very exciting time in the journey of making any garment where we are going to put this drawstring into our dress and then we'll be able to like actually try it on and see sort of how it's going to look. So the easiest way to get a drawstring through a casing is to use a safety pin. Safety pin, like so. You want to find the front. Okay, we are going to be feeding it through one side of the back first, then through the entire front, and then through the other side of the back. And I like to pay careful attention to like a right side and a wrong side. I know it's hard to see maybe, but there's definitely one side of this that looks better than the other. On this side, the seam is visible, but on this side, it isn't. So I want to make sure that when I feed this through, that side is the side that is out. So it's not like this. It's like this. So when I get my safety pin, we are simply going to put this through one end, like so. Now we have a safety pin on the end of our drawstring, and then you simply start feeding it through the casing. Again, similar to using the bodkin and like pulling the fabric, the tube right side out. It does take a little bit of a nest, especially in these like openings when you're first getting it started, but you're just pushing the safety pin through, feeling around with your fingers, and then pulling it little by little until it comes out the other end, like so. Now try and keep it flat and pull it a majority of the way through. Something like that. Maybe leave, I don't know, what is that, two feet? All right, keeping it flat again, flat, flat, flat, no twisting. Turn your whole garment and then feed it through the other way. I mean, feed it through the front. All right, and once you've got it through the front, then take your safety pin and put it through the other side of the back. You'll be heading from the outside toward the center this time. All right, now it's just a matter of finagling this whole thing so that you can take your safety pin out, so that the drawstring is evenly distributed. Sometimes they'll have on the pattern piece, like dots or something, where it will mark like the shoulder seams and stuff, but they don't have that on this one. So you kind of just have to guess and eyeball it, and then also when you try it on, you will get a feel for it too. But I really just want these strings to be somewhat even, as well as this distance here, the part that's going to be on the shoulder. Just fuss with it a little bit, it's not going to be perfect at this point. When you try it on, it'll be a lot better. That's closer. All right, cool. Very good. So you can see they have you insert the drawstring through one back casing, through the front casing, and then exit through the remaining back casing, having ends even, which we've tried to accomplish here. And then when wearing dress, pull up drawstring and tie in a bow in a back, distribute fullness evenly on front and back. So there will be an element of scrunchiness in the front too. So keep that in mind. But if you'd like, go ahead, try this guy on, get all of this distributed how you like it, and then you can even take a needle and thread and sew this down from the inside, so that it stays even after you wash it. Because inevitably, if you wash it and it's not sewn down, then the drawstring could even come out, certainly may not stay flat, all of that. So try this on and finagle this drawstring as best you can. All right, I have thrown this onto my dress form. Let's give us some more light. People are always asking me if it's worth it to get a dress form or not. And quite honestly, most of the time, it's not. But in cases like this, it can be really helpful because it's just me here. I don't have anybody to help me get this centered so I can use this as like a jumping off point. It's not exactly my body. I mean, it's close, but you know, nobody is this symmetrical. And then when I put it on, make any little last minute tweaks that I need to make. But basically, I just tried to even this out as much as possible and scrunch it all together and yeah, just try to make it as pretty as possible. And then I will throw some pins into these areas here. And then I am going to stitch those closed just because I don't want to keep doing this every single time I go and wear this dress. All right, you guys, we are moving on to step 20. And again, this is optional. This is only if you want your garment to be cinched in at the waist. If you don't, then just stop the video now and catch up with us next week when we will be going over all the finishing details, including the hem of the dress. But if you want some waistline waistline definition, then add a little casing. You are going to need some single fold bias tape. Looks like this. It looks like I got purple to match the outside, but certainly I could have done white on the inside since this is kind of white. I don't know. You can also do contrast if you want. It's your dress. You can do literally whatever you want. So if you look at bias tape, basically what it is is it is a piece of fabric cut on the diagonal where it has the most stretch. You can see it kind of stretching out a little bit there. And then the raw edges fold it over. This is what's known as single fold bias tape. If it were double fold, it would be folded again like so. That would be double fold, but we need single fold because we're going to be making, we're going to be using this to make the casing. We're going to be feeding the elastic through this little funnel type thing that is created. So step 20 is actually very helpful tip. And that is to sew down your seam allowances. If you did not do French seams, I do recommend doing step 20, but because we did French seams on mine, I don't think it's going to be that big of an issue. This is basically just to prevent like when you feed the elastic through, you're going to use the safety pin method again. And sometimes when you're feeding it through, it can get stuck here, you know, and not want to go through. But I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal. So I'm going to skip it, but this is a really helpful tip. So feel free to do step 20 if you want. I don't know that it's going to be that big of a deal for me with the French seams. So I'm going to go to step 20. And that is basically to take your bias tape. I'm apparently unwinding the whole thing. I will go to the iron. I will press this out because it has all of these little creases in it from being folded in the packaging. And they want you to start on a side seam. Remember the placement line that we copied over? There it is. And basically you start at a side seam. You place the lower edge of the bias tape along that line, like so. Try not to stretch your fabric, but also not have it bunched up either, right? So you place it all along there. You will add pins and then you will stitch very, very close to one edge and then very, very close to the outer edge and then we'll feed the elastic through the middle. That's the plan. So you take the edge and you just tuck it under like that. Place that along your side seam, like so, and then just start pinning from the underside. Place it on the lower, place the lower part of the tape on the placement line, and then just start pinning. This is going to be one of those things that you really, really want to take your time with because you don't want this thing to be crooked. If it's crooked, then it'll be crooked on your body, trust me. So really, really take your time. Like I said, go press out all of the little creases. Place this exactly on the lower edge and then I'll meet you at the sewing machine and I'm going to show you pretty much a full proof way of getting that stitching very, very close to the edge of the bias tape very as easily as possible. Anyways, so I'll meet you over there. With most sewing machines, you should get a foot that looks like this and it's used for a blind hem. You can see it has a little like a little itty-bitty piece of metal kind of going through the center of it. That is the foot that you want to use when you have to edge stitch something. An edge stitch is really what it sounds like. You're stitching something very, very, very close to the edge, which is what we're doing with this bias tape. So find the part of your garment where you started the bias tape. For me, it's right here. I like to put the hem side in, but that's just personal preference. I'm also going to move this camera out of the way a little bit. You want to put all this in here and you want to make sure that everything is flat and that there's not anything else bunched up. There's a lot of fabric here. You know what I mean? So just make sure that it's not bunched up. You want to tuck your side seam back underneath that bias tape. Alright, now you're going to place the presser foot where that little piece of metal is right on the edge of the bias tape and the edge of the bias tape is right along the blue line. In theory, where's my blue line? Oh, there it is. So as you're sewing, you're keeping this, you're keeping this edge on the edge of the bias tape and the edge of the bias tape on the line. It's kind of a lot. You might want to hang back your speed and go real slow. You also need to move your needle. You also want to move your needle to where it's just on the very edge of that bias tape. I'm going to leave mine about that far. I want to say it's like, I don't know, 16th of an inch, maybe closer? It's very, very close to the edge, but I'm going to go real slow and really take my time with this. I recommend you do too. This is easily the trickiest part. Take a deep breath. It's going to be fine. I can't think of anything else to say about it. You just kind of got to go. Trust yourself. Don't forget the back stitch so that it stays in place forever. Again, I'm just keeping the middle bar that runs through the middle of this presser foot right on the edge of the bias tape, and then I'm holding the bias tape down right along that blue line that I have. If you are very, very new to sewing and this part is freaking you out, then I would recommend basting all along the center of the bias tape just to hold it in place, basting it to where the edge of the bias tape is on the blue line. That way you have one less thing to worry about. You know the bias tape is in the right place. This, I'm trying to kind of manage a lot of things at once, so if you want to eliminate some of those, then go ahead and baste this down where it needs to stay. Kind of readjusting as I go, making sure the bias tape is always on the edge of that blue line, and I'm going to knock it up a little bit. I'm feeling a little more confident. I caught a little bit of the fabric when I started this seam, so I'm just going to unpick some of that. Alright, and as you're getting close to the edge, you're going to want to trim back the edge of your bias tape where we left that really long tail. We obviously don't need all of that anymore, so I'm only going to leave about 3 1⁄8 of an inch, and then I'm going to fold it back like I did on the other side, making sure the bias tape lines up nice and pretty, and then finish off the seam. Okay, and you can see here what we've got. We've got one edge of the bias tape completely sewn, and then the folded over edges kind of sort of meeting. Not exactly perfect, but now we need to turn the garment around and do this exact same thing to the other side, or because we're using this funky little foot, what you can do is just move that little middle piece, that middle guide, move that to the other side of the bias tape, and then move your needle to the other side of the guide. Makes sense. That's why I love this one so much because, A, it keeps it nice and even. I can even stitch all the way down, which you can see here. It looks like pretty perfect to me, and also you can move your needle around it, and the fabric always stays in the same place. Now, when you're sewing this, you just want to make sure to keep this nice and flat, to not stretch out your fabric in any way, and just let everything lay nice and flat against the base of the machine. We are all done. It actually looks really cute in the lavender, but you can see how even all my stitching ends up being by using that foot with the metal guide in the center that you can use. Also, just full transparency here, you know. It's not perfect. I imagine yours probably aren't either, so we will all commiserate on what it looks like on the inside that no one will ever see except for us. Yay! But what you have here, if you realize it, is a little tunnel. Can you see how the tweezers are going inside this little tunnel? So we are going to be feeding a little itty-bitty piece of elastic all the way through this tunnel, all the way around, pulling it tight against our body, or as tight as we want it to be, and then you have a cinched-in waist. It's perfect. So let's head back to the table, and I'll show you how to thread the elastic and measure it and all that stuff. All right, so the elastic that you need for this is 3 eighths inch wide. I like to get the braided elastic whenever it's going inside of a casing. They have all kinds of different kinds. I've been thinking about doing a video on the different types of elastic. There's some blogs about it. You can do a little bit of research on your own if you want, but let me know if you'd like a video just showing the different kinds and what I like each one for. But I like the braided for this when it goes in a casing. It's actually nice and soft and just comfortable and not, I don't know, not too stiff, you know, because there's not much between this and my body. And if it's real stiff, like not pliable this way, I don't know, it's just, this to me is more comfortable. Okay, and then you're wondering, okay, well, how much length of it do we need? Well, we have piece number five for that. This is the guide for the elastic. So you'll take the elastic. In theory, you will have pressed this as well, maybe with a little bit of steam. And you lay one end on the guide, and you pull it, not pull it, but you, you know, lay it out without stretching it to the size of the garment that you are making. So I'm making a medium. So I'm going to snip it off right there. Inevitably though, I do end up adjusting this a little bit just for comfort, but this will give you a good jumping off point. And then all of this is extra for your next project. All right. And then similarly to how we fed the drawstring through the neckline casing, we are going to do the same process for the elastic. You put your safety pin through one end. This time it doesn't matter what end, because there's no seam or anything. This is all going to be hidden. And then you find your opening on your side seam of your dress and you feed the, let's go in through the hem, you feed the, what's it called, safety pin through one end and then work it around. And then you just keep pushing it through. And you're going to do this all the way around your garment, making sure that this doesn't go all the way through. Keep a little bit of it hanging out. Also make sure your elastic doesn't twist. And honestly, just kind of tedious, but you just slowly inch your way around. And as I suspected, this is where they were nervous about the safety pin getting caught up in the seam allowance, but mine just skated right over it. So I'm glad I didn't bother with that other step. But if you don't have narrow seam allowance like this, you have, you know, your full five eighths or something for some reason, then I definitely would, because it can get stuck. Right, we are through to the other side. So pull it hot, kind of redistribute everything, then you're going to take your, the other end and snap this. I think it might have gotten a little bit twisted, but that's okay. And then put these together, put the safety pin back in. That way this doesn't ever come unthreaded or get stuck inside the casing while we kind of try and distribute all of this gathering. Almost little by little. The casing will, the elastic will all be eaten up inside of this casing. You just kind of have to keep working it. Be patient. So undo your safety pin. Carefully hold these two ends together. And then you're going to go to your sewing machine and you are going to stitch them like on top of each other, kind of like, I don't know, a sandwich or something. And you're going to stitch a box with an X in the middle. That's what I like to do. And there is a five eighth inch seam allowance allowed here. So, you know, overlap them by five eighths. Don't be skimpy. You can change your presser foot back to your regular one now. Move your needle back over. And I mean, this is a little bit funky because you just don't have a lot to work with, but just get it as flat as you can. Again, it does not have to be perfect. So now we have that completely attached. You can kind of see the stitching there. And that's not going anywhere. So yeah, we'll just redistribute this back into the garment and then we will have our casing completely sewn. Yay. Um, I think we're, this is the next to the last video before I really show you it all done. So we are finishing. So next week we will do the hem and we will make a belt if you're making the belt. And that's really it. We're rounding out our garment, as you can tell, looking pretty good. So let me know if you guys have any questions. Let me know if you guys have any problems. Let me know what you think. Cute, right? All right. I will see you guys next week. Bye.