 So together pattern, which is the made for Mermaid's Alana tank, dress, maxi, amine. This pattern has a little bit of everything for everyone. So I wanted to give you some of my tips and tricks for how to execute Alana, including fabric options, including options for the somewhat terrifying bias binding. I'll talk to you about that in a second and also getting this pattern printed. As you guys know, I get my patterns printed at Sublime Graphics online because they print on tissue paper, which is really just so nice whenever you're making a pattern that requires either knit fabric or kind of like lightweight fabric. You know how your regular computer paper likes to kind of get stuck. Those little corners like to catch onto the fabric and screw up your whole layout. So being able to work with tissue paper on indie patterns is just such a gift. First, let's talk about the pattern. So this pattern is basically a knit tank top dress, right? Spaghetti straps. You have two front neckline versions, high and low. And you have three, technically five back versions. You have a high back, mid back, low scoop back, and then you can add ties across the middle of your back. There's two different options. There's a bar that's just straight across, or you have one that you can tie into a bow if you would prefer to do that. Then you have options for length. So we have a crop top. We have a regular top. We have a mini dress, a regular length dress, and a maxi dress. So you start mixing and matching all of those together, including all of the different types of fabrics that you could use on this pattern, and you could have a whole wardrobe of these tank top dresses in no time. Speaking of fabric, the pattern really just says any kind of lightweight knit, cotton jersey, ITY, blends, polyester. You could even do a double brush poly. I know a lot of you really love working with that. You could do a double brush poly to have kind of like a warmer version. A polyester doesn't breathe very much. That double brush poly especially doesn't breathe very much, but it would make a really cute layering piece if you wanted to do it in a double brush poly. I chose a cotton modal blend. I'm obsessed with the cotton modal blends right now, so all my t-shirts are being made from. This is the Moody Blooms from Moda. So it's like a quilter's cotton brand that they also print some of their prints onto different substrates and one of them happens to be this cotton modal spandex blend, which is really just so, so, so good. So beautiful, vibrant color, but this has such beautiful drape. You can see that here. And because I'm making the maxi dress, I also wanted to make sure that it wasn't too, too, too heavy and that it would be able to flow and drape. Oh, I forgot to mention about the pattern. There's also slit options. You can do like a knee length. What are they? Calf length, knee length, or thigh length slit as well. So even more option. So I needed it to have that movement and this fabric accomplishes that perfectly. I'm so excited about the kind of weight and the drape of this is just so, so, so good. And then the print is kind of just like an all over. I didn't want a solid, but I did want something that, you know, wasn't big, huge flowers. And I wanted it to read just a little bit more kind of like an all over easy print. That to me in a maxi where it's, you know, really lots of fabric and it's head to toe and there's nothing breaking it up. A lot of these like smaller prints are the way that I like to go for stuff like that. I will say the wrong side is it's like printed on. So the wrong side is white and that makes me this much hesitant because of the slits. So whenever you walk, obviously your slits open up and you can see the underside of the fabric. It's not one of those things that anybody like regular people who don't sew on the street are going to be like, oh my gosh, look, her fabric is white on the inside. Like nobody's going to say that, but it will bother me. Like when I'm walking or sitting, so that is the only reason I might go for a lower slit is just so less of that happens. It might be one of those things where I just say, the sort of two evils, I think I really want to die. I slit and just go for it. In addition to the kind of main part of the fabric that you need, you are also going to be required to make bias tape because that is what finishes off the neck edges and also creates your strapping. Now I'm not normally a fan of that because I find that making your own bias tape in knit fabric is very, very difficult. Obviously the fabric stretches. It's really hard to get it to do what you need it to do anyways, much less finagling it with a bias strip with all the folds and everything else. But fear not, because Dom Maker fabrics, where I actually, where I got the main fabric as well, sells jersey bias tape. Check this out. Super cool. It is jersey fabric, cotton jersey, and made into pre-made bias tape. So it's like one less thing that you have to worry about. You know what I'm saying? Like you can just get to sewing it and you don't have to worry about anything else. I'm interested to see the instructions in the pattern. I haven't actually sewn this up yet, obviously. I'm interested to see the instructions in the pattern though because I'm wondering how they have you kind of finish this without stretching everything out. You can see that's going to still be like a pretty little spaghetti strap. And then because Style Maker is so great, you can leave in your order notes that you want the bias binding to match whichever fabric and tell them which fabric you want and they'll send you one that matches. So I thought that was really, really great too. Okay. So that is fabric. That's the pattern. The only notion that you need is that bias tape. So let's talk about the pattern itself. So obviously in order to get sublime graphics to print the pattern on the tissue paper for me, I had to send them an AO file. So an AO file is like a large format print and usually the pattern companies have their pattern pieces arranged in such a way that they fit on these sheets of AO. But the size, the length of an AO sheet is still limited and still predetermined. And because this is a maxi dress, obviously you cannot fit an entire maxi dress on an AO sheet of paper. So you do have to do a little bit of taping. You can see where I overlapped it here. But the neat thing and because, you know, I told you guys, I am not very good at matching all the stuff. I don't know why. I'm just not good at it. They never end up like the first couple line up and then I go to line up the rest of them and then they don't line up anymore. But this one, because the paper is see-through, you can totally see like where you're supposed to line things up. So I found it to be super, super simple to do that and you only have to do it twice. You have to do it for the front piece as well as the back piece. But if you are making the mini length dress or shorter, you won't have to do that at all. So that's something to note as well. Also you can see that Mayfair Mermaids designs their PDFs in color. The sizing is actually not done by numbers. It's done by color. So you're not associating your size with a number. I think this is great for two reasons. One, you're not tempted to just make whatever size you would normally wear and ready to wear, which we all know does not convert to sewing patterns. But two, you just lose the association of like, I am this size. I am a number. You know what I mean? When you do it by color, there's just no correlation between color and waist circumference or whatever it is. You know what I'm saying? So in a way, it makes it more of an enjoyable experience. You're not getting so hung up on, well, this other pattern company, I sew this number and this one, I sew that number. You know, here it's just like there's no relation to numbers at all. So you just go by the measurement chart and you just make it because you just have to pick a color and that's that color is what your size is going to be. So I relate that as well. And sublime graphics also prints like in color for free. There's no additional charge. So you just upload the file that already comes in color and then that's what they print. I'm not even sure if you could get a color file printed in black and white. I absolutely adore the tissue paper. The quality is really great. And like I said, all the colors print really nicely. So it's just so easy to use and you know, it's not like the super thin tissue paper that you get with big four patterns, but it's definitely not copy shop paper either. They also have a paper weight that is in between those two. I like the middle road paper too. It's certainly a big difference. It's just smoother and I don't know. It's just different. I don't know. The weight is not that much difference than copy shop paper. I find the quality to be a lot, a lot better. But of course, the tissue paper is number one, especially on lightweight or knit fabrics. I cannot draw that home enough. Working with tissue paper on those fabrics is pretty much like a must do in my opinion. So that is Sew Together 21 for August. I am going to be posting a video here in a couple days showing you guys how to add a shelf bra. You know, I want there to be a little bit of coverage there. I'm not expecting for it to be, you know, like super supportive, but I am not in doubt enough to need a ton of support. I technically could wear this out without a bra, but comfort level wise, I would rather just have like another layer there if I could. So I'm going to show you guys how to kind of alter the pattern to add a little shelf bra in there. But that is going to do it for me today. Check the description box. I have a link for Sublime Graphics. I have a coupon code for Sublime Graphics, you guys. So you can save a little bit of money on your order from Sublime Graphics, not even the first order. It's literally any order. So yeah, show them some love, give them a try. If you're a PDF lover, you are going to flip over this tissue paper. But that's going to do for me today, y'all. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you very soon. Bye.