 Who is ready for another Sew Along? Today is going to be episode one. The information in this video, if you've followed my Sew Alongs in the past, this is usually what I call episode zero, but because this top is a little bit more basic and simple, there aren't a ton of instructions, we're able to fit episode zero into the entire Sew Along as well. So first things first, you need to download, if you haven't already, the free Sew Along Workbook. The link to this is in the description box. If you do not have it already, go ahead and download it. Like I said, it is totally free. Okay, so let's get into it. The pattern, like I said, is McCalls 8255. Some things that you need to know when you go shopping for fabric. I will show you. And I, when I got to the store and I started looking through the pattern and I realized that the top is fully lined except for the sleeves. So the whole bodice is fully lined. I kind of switched gears a little bit and decided to go for a super lightweight fabric that might even be a little bit on the sheer side. This is a cotton dobby that has a Swiss dot to it. So you can see that it's a little bit sheer, but it is very, very lightweight because when we double this up, I don't want it to be a super thick or hot or heavy weight garment at the end. This is after all a summer top. So I ended up getting this. It's actually technically muslin, but it's 100% cotton. So it matches the exterior and it's also really thin and lightweight. That said though, if you are going to make views A or D that do not have, sorry about the lighting, that do not have this little tulip hem, you don't need a lining. You don't. I will show you through the instruction how you were able to take the pattern pieces that they've already given us and make a facing and then just do your simple hem. You will have exposed zipper tape on the inside of your garment, but I think that that far outweighs the idea that you have to have a lining for this garment. Now if you are making the tulip hem, a lining is simpler simply because the hem is a little bit difficult to him without a facing and or lining. So minus well, go ahead and make a lining for it. Same thing with the collar. It's just easier if you have that tool of him to just do a lining. So if you're going to do that straight across version, you can do heavier weight wovens. You can do a linen, for example, and you wouldn't feel too like thick and hot and all of that. Take you guys over to the cutting table where we are going to look at my fast fit worksheets and I'm going to show you the process that I go through in order to pick my pattern size. So let's head over there and pick a size. All right, you guys. So working through my fast fit worksheet here and I've got my measurements. One thing I want to point out is because this is a top that does not extend all the way down to your low hip, you do not need to worry about your hip measurement here. I am going to take my high hip measurement though, just so I can check that against the bottom hem measurement and make sure that it is going to fit my lovely pear shape. Body chart size. We move right along to this section here and I'm comparing against mine. So for a size 40 bust, that's an 18 and that equals 40 inches and then the waist come to a 36 which I'm in between a 20 and a 22. That means we're always going to size down. So that's size 20, 35 inches and then we're not doing the hip. We're not doing waist length. We are moving down to finish garment measurements and all they give us is the finished bust. So we have here our finished bust measurements. So finished for a size 18 is 44 inches and that's an 18 and then finished for a size 20 at the waist is 35 and a half inches. Perfect. And then again, we don't have the hip but as you can tell, like it's just a few inches lower than your waistline. So C is a little bit longer but it's still not that nine inches that's like the industry standard for the difference between your waist and your hip. It's more like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven and a half minus your seam allowance. So it's not all the way to your low hip. So if you're a pear and your hips curve out a bunch this might not be enough curve for you. This slight curve that they have here but because I'm making B which is only one, two, three, four inches less our seam allowance for the hem. You know, there's probably not that much curve between my waist and four and a half inches down because we have so many seams. So if you look at view B, we have our side seams obviously. We have these front princess seams and then also in the back we have princess seams again. So that's one, two, three, four, five, six seams each one of them at five eighths inch of a seam allowance. That is three and a half, four and three quarters of an inch to play around with at that hem. So I'm going to leave it just like this and not even factor in my hip measurement at all here because I know that I can borrow from the seam allowances in order to fit the hip better because we have so many seams. Alright, so our pattern ease is going to be the difference between number three and number two. So pattern ease at the bust is four inches. Pattern ease at the waist is half an inch close fitting waist. Maybe measure after you have a sandwich. But the intended fit of this is going to be number one plus number four. So should be 44 inches at the bust and the waist should be 36 and a half. So the size to cut three should equal five. And on this size it does so an 18 at the bust and then 35 and a half versus 36 and a half. So I need to add an inch at the waist. I can still make size 20 not 18 inches. I can still make size 20 and then again just borrow from a few of those seam allowances. So at the waist one inch divided by six whatever that is is what I would need to add to each seam allowance. But I think that because I want it to be a little bit more than half an inch of room in my waist, I might just do a quarter inch at all side seams. And that would be a quarter inch times six is one and a half inches extra. So then I'll have two inches at my waist equals two inches of ease. Okay, so that's what I'm going to do and then this will carry down into the hip as well so that when I go to make these pattern adjustments we're going to take my waistline we're going to go to a size 18 20. We're going to add that quarter of an inch. So we're going to grade out from an 18 out 18 at the bust way up here out to what I guess technically is going to be a 24. Yeah, so I can go bust and then somewhere through here make it a 20 and then somewhere through here make it that 24 and keep that all the way down through the hem. So coming all the way down through here so it'll look something like this. All right, so that's what I am going to cut and I know I'll have a little bit of extra wiggle room in the waist and hopefully a little bit of extra wiggle room in the hip as well. And if it's too much I can always take it out right. Always better to have too much than not enough. But I am going to be an 18 literally everywhere else. Okay, so now that we are done with that figuring out which size to cut coming to the workbook here we're going to choose a size. So now I'm going to go through and make all of these alterations. We did not do the bicep in the fast fit worksheet but you totally can just add another line. For an 18 it's 17 inches my bicep is 14 so I know that that's plenty but if you want to check yours go ahead. I don't think many of us will have much of an issue because the sleeves are gathered. You can see there's a big puff sleeve on B. I'm actually using the sleeve of A which has some gathers and D is pretty roomy as well. So just double check that against your own but I'm making an 18 so that it fits into the upper part of my bodice and I know that 17 inches is going to be plenty. So I am going to throw these up on my dress form which means that you would need to pin them together as if you had sewn them. Let me get this all pinned and up on the dress form and I'll show you any adjustments that I have to make lengthwise. Okay, can you kind of see what we've got here? We've got our front with our front princess seam, our side seam and then our side back which is a back princess seam. I've also got my shoulder pinned and then we're going to pin this along the center back and center front on my dress form. Okay, so I've got it on here tentatively pinned in where it's supposed to go and I'm noticing a few things. One is the shoulder seam. Can you guys see this little seam here? That's my shoulder and the shoulder of the pattern is way forward. So pretty concerning with that. Same thing with the side. Now granted I didn't measure in order to pin this together. So the side seam is down here at the hip. This is the side seam of my, this is the side of my body here and then you can see where the side seam of the garment is falling. So a few little concerning things there that I don't normally see very often. So I'm going to be double checking that for sure. And then something that almost always happens for me is I'm short waisted. All my length is in my rise. So from my low hip to my waist. So from here you can see my bust line is here and my waistline is here. There's only a few inches. So I normally always have to shorten the length of bodices. So the waistline is here and my waistline is here. So I have to shorten by, I don't know what is that four inches or something. So I'll measure that, shorten that amount and then that will bring this entire hem up like a lot. Okay so you can get a feel for it there. Again I'm not being super precious about it right now but if I do that then you can see where this is actually going to hit. Just a lot higher on the body, a lot higher on those hips. Now if I decide that you know what like this is my belly button, I can see my belly button and the hem of this is going to hit right at my belly button. I thought it would have to be my waistline. I can move it down some. Maybe I wanted to hit an inch below my belly button for example. So instead of taking out all four of those inches I'll just take out three and can kind of adjust the length that way but I do want to honor kind of the cropped nature of it. But maybe my belly button showing is a little bit too short you know what I'm saying. Other than that everything looks pretty good. We've got a ton of room in the arm side which is great for when you have a sleeve. If I were making the sleeveless version I might remove some of this you know pinching out the little the little slices in the back but all that looks pretty good. The depth of the arm side looks really good so you can see here it's not going to show my bra. It's not going to like cut me off. Once you take out the seam allowances for the sleeve I think that will look really good and then just shorting the back to match the front. All right so all I'm doing here is I marked that seam on my dress form on the pattern piece on back and I drew in the seam allowance. I'm folding this up and putting the seam allowance right on that line that I drew in like so and this is where my tape will go. So now I've just removed that and also adjusted for that angle there. I just need to find some tape. So now the back is adjusted for that length. It will not wrap around to the front anymore and now I need to add to the front so that the front will wrap around to the back. So you can see the amount that I took out here is the amount that I need to add to the front. So I'll just measure that is roughly we'll call it three eighths on one end and the other end is just about a half. So I'm going to cut through my seam allowance here take a piece of the leftover like trash tissue and put in and then I'm not going to show you guys but obviously you would you know pin this back together put it back on your dress form and make sure that these two things go together like they are supposed to and draw in the the little notch again. So that's that the other thing that I checked for was the sort of side seam issue that I was having and I think what happened was and I should have thought of this earlier but you know a lot going on in the mind my back is very narrow as compared to my front. I carry a lot of belly weight remember the bloat that I mentioned earlier um so my back is actually a smaller size at the waist end high hip ish area than my front. So adding all of that quarter inch at all of those side seams is too much for my back. So I think what I'm going to do is just chop it off and make an 18 all the way down. No I'm going to that's too aggressive. For now I'm going to slim it down to the size 20 on both back pieces and just come up to where this meets like that. So now I have removed about a quarter of an inch times one two three four once I do the other ones as well and then that'll give me just a little bit less ease through the back okay so that's side back back that's the same that's the same okay so there removed all of that and then lengthwise you can see where did I put it oh here it is my back is also longer than my front I don't know how that ends up happening but my waist line for the back is only one and a quarter inches away from the waist line I'm sorry it's two and a quarter inches away from the waist line so I'm I know it says lengthen or shorten here it's essentially what we're doing we're pinching at the waist line moving it up to that line that matches the ribbon on my dress form so that's going to be my new back okay so that's my new back piece my new back piece now the oh wait I need to shorten this as well so we ended up shortening it by yep so that's two and something two and a quarter all right so now whenever I take this up they will match so now those have been taken up an equal amount now we will come to the front and see what the damage here the line is is this it that might be it is that it yeah that's it here's the line here so remember though I didn't really want to take all of this I want my hem to be one inch longer so I'm going to line up the center front and instead of this being my waistline I'm now going to make this my waistline so that it is that one inch longer and then you can see one two and a quarter inches roughly pinch and move the waistline up to here okay so again this was one and a half inches so about three inches got taken out and then we will double check the side seams because we do want the side seams to match right but other than that we should be good to go here all right and then true up all your seams again and just make sure there's like a nice little flow between them so like I said we need to true up the lines here make sure those are nice and smooth same thing this will actually get all chopped off through here this needs to be true and then we will check the side seams of the back and front so we've got the side front side back this part with the notch should all be the same through here we just need to double check through here and as you can see the back is still a little bit longer than my front so I'll just naturally grade that down just a little bit in order to get those two things to match so with all of that the alterations are done we're not doing anything to my sleeve we do have these pattern pieces which are not going to be adjusted that's not true they are because we adjusted the shoulder so the same adjustment that we made to the shoulder that three eighths to a half inch that got taken out of the back and added to the front we will need to mimic that on the shoulder seams here and here yeah and that'll be it and then I'm going to cut out my lining first and that's what I'm going to sew tomorrow so that if I have to make any of these small adjustments I can make them to the lining and you won't see them in my actual fashion fabric so as I'm cutting up this last one a few tips here about cutting is when you are done cutting out all of your pattern pieces fold the pattern pieces up with the fabric that you just cut out like I'm going to fold this whole thing as one you might have noticed me noticed me doing it um a little bit before too other than that that's really all I can think of for the cutting process I mean obviously you know line up your green lines with the salvage of the fabric all the usual stuff oh clip the center front of your front piece that'll help you as we line the lining up with the main fabric like the help you line up the center fronts if you go ahead and put a little notch in there now that will help you when we get to that point and if you guys have any questions at all about any of this that I have done today if you want me to take a look at your fast fit worksheet if you want me to um look at your dress form any of that kind of stuff uh become a hem sider ASAP we are doing a live zoom tonight 5 p.m eastern where we're going to answer any questions that you guys have about what we covered today and then we'll do that same thing every night this week um addressing each day's work okay so we are all prepped and ready to go ready to turn on our sewing machines tomorrow and get to sewing um like I said before this is pretty simple and straightforward pattern so day two is really going to consist of just constructing the bodices we should be able to knock this out in 30 45 minutes each day so it's not one of those sew alongs where every day takes a couple of hours you should be able to stay on track sew with me throughout the week and then we can all um reveal our tops at the end of the week so like I said tomorrow day two we're constructing the bodices meet me back here and we'll start sewing tomorrow I'll see you then