 Hi you guys, welcome back to my sew-along for Butterrick 6873. This is the sew-along workbook that we are going to be using, or we already have been using quite a bit, to help us stay organized and stay on track as we go through this sew-along. So if you saw the previous videos already, then you know we have all of our prep work done, which was here on the project checklist. All of this prep work is done, and now we're moving into the sewing category. Today is the day we actually get to sew something. So on the next page is a daily checklist. So we're going to be sewing for the next three days, and this is what we're going to sew each day. So today is officially day one of the sew-along. We've got some bodice work to do, some sleeve work to do, and then we're going to attach those two things together. So enough rambling on my part, let's get to sewing. All right, since we've already got our facings interfaced, we can skip right past step number one and get started sewing with step number two, which is to work on the front bodice. So that is piece number one. The first step is to stay stitch the neck edge, and then we're going to press, we're going to stitch the dart and press those down as well. So what stay stitching is, stay stitching is going to go right along the seam line at your normal stitch length all along this edge here. Because this is cut on a diagonal from your grain line, it can tend to stretch out over time. Even just like touching it can cause it to stretch out, and we really want that part of the bodice to stay intact, because it needs to stay really nice and flat against your chest, you know, no gaping, we don't want any of that. So we go over to the machine, we stay stitch it. This one doesn't have a direction, so we will start at the shoulder and we will stay stitch all the way down to this little bottom portion here, both sides, we're not stitching them together, it's just one layer of fabric stitched along the seam line. And then our darts, you can see I have mine marked, there's the point, and then here are the two legs, there's one leg, one leg, and there's this guy here. So I need to just trace in that little line, or the line that is there, tracing between the dot and the notches that I made, and then I'll show you on one of these how to make a dart. So it's really easy, I'm going to put this other piece to the side for now, but basically what we're trying to do is match up these two lines together as accurately as possible. So I will start at the side seam, and I will just pin through one of the legs, and then I will bring it up to the other one, like so, and we're going to make sure that this is nice and flat, and that the pin is kind of going straight across like so, and then I'll come on the other end, pin this guy, and then I will pin the lines together in between those two points. So all along here, just maybe two or three of them, just making sure I'm putting it through one line, and that it matches up with the other one. See how that's off a little bit? So I'll adjust the back ever so slightly. If you need even more instruction on how to sew darts, you can get my garment sewing basics course. I'll have a link in the description box, but it is, I think, 11 or 12 different skills, similar to darts. You'll learn everything you need to know about garment sewing, all of the various skills that we use, including sleeves, and belts, and pleats, and just all the things that you will come across while you are making clothes. But that's the real quick and dirty of how to do a dart. You can see all the backs of my pins are coming through the line here, and then all the fronts are coming through here. So I'll just take that to the machine. You start here, backstitch, come all the way down, and then pull a long tail and tie a knot. So stay stitching and darts at the machine now. All right, let's talk, stay stitching again. Let me reiterate what that is. Let me find the right seam here. Okay, so we're going to place this under our needle at the shoulder. And again, we're following the seam line. So I've got my fabric at the raw edge at the 5 eighths inch seam allowance line, needle down, and we're just going to sew. This is just one layer of fabric. We're just going to put a stitch line all the way down here, doing our very best to make sure that none of this gets stretched out. We're not pulling on this at all. We're just following the natural line of this, keeping it nice and loose. Okay, and when you get to the end, just clip your thread, and that is all there is to it to stay stitching. All right, so we're going to sew our dart, placing the needle on the little white line that I drew in, traced in, and we are going to backstitch first. Okay, we're going to rub this guy, and then we're going to come all the way down to the point following the white line. Okay, and then when we get to the point, we are going to come all the way. And some people, depending on the weave of your fabric, will also come down to make a smaller stitch lengthen normal right at the very tip. You can do that until you come off the edge of the fabric, lift your presser foot, and then pull all of this out, and then you will tie these two strings into a knot, and that is what will secure your dart. All right, so you should have already also pressed your dart down. I'm going to get this situated, orientated, oriented. I don't know the word. I think I like to add syllables sometimes. It's like a running joke from the people who know me in real life, so I think orientated is probably wrong. But you press your dart down, okay? And remember, I shortened my bodice, so if yours has more space here, that's why. Nobody did anything wrong. I just shortened my bodice a whole bunch. Remember all that time we spent truing the dart? That's so that on this side, it's as smooth as possible. Granted, I didn't do an excellent job, but it looks better than what it would have if I did nothing, so I'm okay with that. All right, so now we are going to attach, oh, I'm sorry, we're going to stay stitch the neck edge of the bodice back. So we already know what stay stitching is. We've already done it to the front along here. We're going to do the same thing on the back, and then with right sides together, stitch the front to back at shoulders and any sides. Okay, so I need our back piece, piece number two, and this is the neck edge that they are referring to. And this is, I'm going to put a little pin in here just to help me remember that this is the right side of the fabric, because mine looks the same front to back. But we're going to go stay stitch, and they didn't indicate it here, but the right way to do this to prevent any stretching while sewing is to start at the shoulder seam and come down to the center and then break your stitches, flip the garment over, start at the shoulder seam, calm down, and break at the center again. That way this, when you're sewing this way, that provides the least amount of stretch along this little bias right here. Okay, and then once that is done, right sides together, the back and the front shoulders go in. So the shoulder seam is this big long one here. You should have a notch that matches at the shoulder line right here. Okay, and then you match your raw edges and make sure that the bias that has the um, stay stitching is what's in the center of your garment. Your stay stitching should come up through here and then match up with the stay stitching on the back and then come down the other side, right sides together again with the stay stitching line in the middle of the garment. Can you all see how that will all kind of be our bodice front? Be very careful to not pull this and move it around a lot. We put the stay stitching in, but that's really just a precaution. Like you could still really stretch things out and that is the last thing we want to do. Okay, back to the machine. Okay, so first things first, stay stitching the back neckline. Again, at the seam line, drop your needle, regular stitch length, and we're going to come to the center of the bag. Okay, break our stitches, starting on the other shoulder line now, same thing. That is done. So now we need to match up our shoulder seams, like I demonstrated at the table. Okay, so I've got mine pinned and I matched up the notch first and then I came to this edge and something that might happen to you that looks wrong but it's not is that at the raw edge, at the cut line, they don't match up. You can see how the front is longer than the back, but at the seam line, down here at the 5 eighths inch mark, they do match up. Okay, so don't match up your raw edges here. Make sure you're matching up the raw edges at the seam line, not at the cut line. Okay, repeat that for the other shoulder. Run it through your serger, if that's how you're finishing off these raw edges. If you're not using a serger, whatever your preferred finishing method is, pinking shears or binding or whatever. We can also go ahead and stitch the side seam, which is this little curved part where the dart is, front to back. They just get matched up like this and sewn across. Okay, and finish that seam as well and then do the other shoulder and the other side seam. Okay, and look at that. We have a bodice. Again, I'm not going to touch it too much. I know you guys think maybe I'm being a little bit overly cautious about this front seam, but there's nothing worse than this getting stretched out and at that point, really not a lot you can do about it. So really do try and take great care to not touch that center front at all. Don't hang this up. Don't put it on a dress form. You're just going to fold it up nice and put it to the side. Okay, so if you are making arm hole ruffle A, you are going to hem the ruffle first and then put your ruffling in and then attach that to your sleeve opening. I'm going to go over both of these steps later on in the sew along so you can follow along there. I am doing sleeve B, so that's where I'll pick up. So we're doing piece number 12, which is this. And we are going to be stitching the, like what will be the underarm seam. And so I'm going to put right sides of my fabric up like this and then these two shorter sides come together like this, making a tube. And actually before we do that seam, I want to do my little sleeve trick. If you've ever watched any of my sew alongs before, you know that I like to do this like prepressing situation for the hem because it's easier to do flat than it is in the round. So again, I'm marking my right sides of my fabric so I know which is which. And we're going to go ahead and create this casing. So we're going to turn the lower edge of the sleeve to the inside along the fold line, turning in a quarter of an inch on the raw edge, press, stitch, leave, and opening. Okay, that's kind of a lot at once. But it looks like the fold line is our seam allowance. It might be five eighths. Yeah, this is a five eighths ruler and that is exactly what it is. So they want us to turn this up a quarter and then turn it up again three eighths, which will total a five eighths situation. Because I have a serger and because that is such a baby hem and this fabric is so kind of like shifty, I am going to serge the bottom edge and turn the whole thing up five eighths. That is my option, the choice I'm going to make. I know it won't be as beautiful on the inside, but it's easier and sometimes that trade-off is worth it. You know what I'm saying? So I'm going to serge this and then turn this up five eighths of an inch. The way that I like to mark that is actually another really fun trick. So I'll take the whatever I'm folding it up, which is five eighths and I'll double that, which is one and a quarter and that's what I will mark. That way when I get to the iron, I know that that's what I'm folding it up to. That's the line I'm going to. If I just marked the five eighths line, when you go to fold it, you're like, where's the line? I can't see it. So I like to fold it up to meet where the raw edge is going to go. So I would mark one and a quarter inch all the way around this thing and then fold it to meet that. Okay. So I'm going to go do that and then you either make your casing or follow along as I'm doing it. Okay. So I have put in my serger stitches to finish that raw edge and I pressed everything up where the serged edge matches the one and a quarter inch mark and then this thing should be five eighths all the way around and look at that dead on. Okay. So I have not stitched anything, right? This is completely unstitched. It's just pressed and because this is linen, it is pressed really well. I mean, look at that crease. It's beautiful. So we can go ahead and go back to step six now and stitch the side seam of the sleeve or the underarm part of the sleeve. You're going to open out that fold that you just made along the hem and stitch along this line here, matching that one little notch. And then when you are done stitching that line, this is already pre-pressed and so it just kind of naturally folds up on itself and makes it a whole lot easier for you to stitch that down. And well, really, it just makes that hem line like a lot more accurate. It's just a lot easier. Even in a big sleeve like this one, it's easier pressing something flat than it is in the round. Okay. So stitch this, surge this, and then go back to your sewing machine and stitch along the folded edge or for me, that's going to be along this surged edge and leaving an opening for us to insert the elastic and then do all of that for the other sleeve as well. And you can either sew from the top, you know, that's probably prettier, but it's also a lot harder because you can't see what you're catching on the bottom. Do you know what I mean? So I want to make sure that I can see where this surge line is. I mean, it should be five eighths all the way around, but you know, you make mistakes. So I'll just do it from the wrong side. All right. When we are a couple of inches from where we started, I'll go ahead and back stitch and that will leave the opening for me to insert the elastic. Okay. And if you're making sleeve band C, where'd she go? You're just going to take that strip of fabric and sew it along the short edge very similarly to how I did step six. It's just going to be smaller and straighter. And then fold that whole thing in half where the raw edges meet and then you're going to attach it to the sleeve. Okay. So step 10 is attaching this sleeve to the bodice. This is like the most intimidating part of sleeve making, but this one because this sleeve cap, which is this part here is so flat, it's going to be easier. Okay. If you've tried it before and failed, don't worry, give it another go. I think you'll find that this sleeve is a little bit easier to construct. All right. So we've got our top. Here is the sleeve opening. Here is our sleeve. And the sleeve gets inserted into this where the underarm seam and the side seam are going to end up matching. One of these sleeves goes here and one of them goes on the other side. And we have to determine which one goes where, right? This one that I'm holding in my hand, the notch for the front of the bodice is not going to match up with this notch here. See how these two things are supposed to come together and they won't when I put the sleeve in this way. If I put this side of the sleeve in, then I will have a notch here and a notch here and those two things will match. So gently come up under your bodice front, grab the sleeve, wiggle it on down. Okay. From here, you were going to match up your side seams. Well, the underarm seam of the sleeve and the side seam of the bodice, pin that in place. Now you're going to find those two notches. We've got one on the bodice front and one on the sleeve front. Work with me here. There we go. These two things get matched up. Can you see those notches there? Okay, pin that. And I'm not going to touch anything through here. I'm going to go ahead and skip over to the shoulder. So this big notch on the top of the sleeve gets matched up with the shoulder. The shoulder gets pressed to the back. The shoulder seam allowances, I mean. All right. And then we're coming to the back here. We've got the back bodice and the back of the sleeve. So no notches here to help us. So we're just going to kind of, I like to do like half sees, like come in halfway and then come in halfway. So basically I'm breaking it into like quarters and then come in halfway. All right. At this point, depending on the shape of your arm side and all of that, you might want to add more pins. Like maybe through here would be a good idea. This is the shoulder seam and this is where the notch is. All right. And the rest of it I think we can manage at the machine. So I'm going to go sew this in the round and then I'm going to surge that seam allowance. I'm going to finish the seam allowance and then repeat for the other sleeve. All right. Since we are sewing in the round again, I'm going to leave the little arm open so that I can just slide this on again. I'm still being super delicate with my bodice front, making sure I don't stretch that out. Okay, through here. I'm going to start at the side seam at five-eighths of an inch seam allowance and we're just going to sew all the way around keeping the raw edges even the whole way. When you get back to where you started, just back stitch. See, that wasn't so bad, was it? All right. What if you believe our bodices are complete? So there you go. You have a bodice with a diagonal wrap front. Bosses over or something like that. Then you have your beautiful little dart in there and then you also have your sleeve. I'm going to go find some elastic and put elastic in mine and it'll be all bunched up like this. Normally I'd be like holding up the bodice and going, look, this is what we sewed today but I genuinely, as you can probably tell by now, and so paranoid about that bias front that I don't want to touch it and you shouldn't either. But at this point, you should have your bodice and whatever sleeve treatment you're doing done. I mean, how exciting is that? If you're following along in the workbook, tomorrow, day two, we're going to be sewing the skirt. So we're going to go through all the process of sewing the skirt and attaching whatever ruffle adornment we are doing and then we're going to attach that to the bodice as well. So you will have most of the project done tomorrow. There's no zippers in this project so we don't have to worry about any of that difficult stuff. We're going to be able to cruise right through tomorrow making the skirt. So finish your bodices and meet me back here tomorrow where we're going to learn how to sew this skirt.