 Hi you guys! Who is ready for another sew-along? I know that I am. I have been analyzing and over analyzing and muslin-ing. New look 6'7", 2'8", in preparation for this and you guys, she's cute but like I always say you guys know how to pick them for these sew-alongs. They always look so unassuming and then you get into it and you're like oh man this is like more than I thought it would be but in the end it is really cute, really fun to sew and I think we're gonna have a really good time over the next couple of weeks. If you are new here, welcome! My name is Lindsay. I sew all my own clothes and try and teach you guys some of the tricks of the trade geek out here over all things garment sewing and I'm so glad that you found me. I hope that you are going to be sewing along with us. If you haven't already grabbed it, this is the new look 6'7", 2'8", sew-along workbook. This is completely free. I have designed and created it for you guys to help you stay organized during the sew-along process. So it's six pages long. It includes a checklist that includes a shopping list, a prep work list, a sewing list and then we even have it broken down by sewing tasks like the steps in the pattern instructions day by day to help you stay on track and ensure that you can finish this on time for Reveal Day and then there's just a lot of fun simple little checklist here at the end as well. So that is the sew-along workbook. It is linked in the description box. If you don't have it already, highly highly recommend that you pause the video, go grab this, print it out and have it with you. It's going to help you through this video and all of the rest of the sew-along videos for new look 6'7", 2'8". So episode zero. I do episode zero. It's like a prequel to the sew-along because when the sew-along day comes, I like to just get to sewing, which means ahead of time there is a lot of prep work that we have to do and so I do episode zero to kind of talk you through what you need to do, some things that I found as I was going through that process so that whenever the sew-along goes live, you are ready to go. So first things first on episode zero is your shopping list. So we need to grab the pattern. Like I said, new look 6'7", 2'8". New look is always 3'99". Of course, you can get it online as well. And this is a relatively recent pattern of theirs. I feel like if it wasn't, I think it was this spring that it came out, this past spring. And so grab the pattern. You're going to need to grab your fabric. The pattern suggests brocade, double gauze, linen types, poplin, satin, and silk types. And as I have already worked my way through at least the bodice of this pattern, I have thoughts. I have thoughts about this. In my, so this fabric here is like a thrifted sheet. So it is 100% cotton, pretty tightly woven, you know, easy to work with fabric. And because we have so many gathers in this pattern, there's gathering along the shoulder, there's gathering along the center back shoulder, there's gathering under the bust, this entire midriff piece is gathered as well as your skirt. And then if you do the view with the sleeve, you even have an elastic casing here. So gathers are not hard to accomplish with, you know, shifty, silky, loosely woven types of fabrics. The problem comes in that when you have these, they're calling them bands. So this little piece here and this flat piece here, the bands are sewn similar to a waistband. So you have the band on the outside and then on the inside is a facing where you're going to sew that in, turn it down, turn up the seam allowances and then stitch in the ditch. That I feel like will be a little bit tricky on some of those shifty fabrics. In addition to that, there is a lot of very exact, precise sewing points that you have to do in order to achieve this v-neck and in order to get the midriff, which is you can't see under this tie, but the midriff is also at a point. It comes to a point in the middle. And so in order to get all of those things to ease in beautifully, to sew them accurately, you have to be able to mark your fabric and sew that fabric really, really accurately. So I just want to caution you if you are newer to sewing or newer to doing v-necks and things like that, I would suggest a stable fabric. It can still be lightweight like a cotton sheet, but it still needs to be stable. I am going to be working with a chambray, 100% cotton chambray for my version. I have my pattern pieces laid out into it right now, but you can see this is the color. So it's going to be a nice dark blue chambray. That said, I'm also going to make the short sleeve version, but I will be talking you through the long sleeve version, which is why I made this the long sleeve version as well. Those, that's my advice on fabrication. Now, obviously I'm not there with you. And if you have a fabric that you absolutely love by all means, go for it. I'm just trying to create a stress-free, as easygoing as possible experience with my fabric recommendations. All right. Next, you will need interfacing. And that is what is next on our little shopping checklist here. I have a favorite interfacing and I talked to you guys about this a lot. I prefer the heat and bond interfacing hands down over any other brand of interfacing that is out there, because one, it comes in woven and non-woven. And I can talk to you about that in a second. And also the application does not require steam, which is important because when the, especially the non-woven interfacings, when steam hits that kind of papery type of I don't know what kind of material it is, that the interfacing is made from, it tends to shrink. And when it shrinks, then it causes your pattern piece or your fabric piece to also shrink. You might have experienced this before when you're trying to put a waistband into a skirt, they're supposed to go in one to one, maybe even some, you know, negative sewing ease there. And it's like, why isn't this fitting? I'm feeling like I need to stretch out the interfaced piece in order for it to go in. More than likely your interfacing has shrunk. So because the heat and bond brand does not require steam at all, only dry heat, the risk of any kind of shrinkage is fully eliminated. And so when it comes to woven versus non-woven, non-woven is that like papery type of material that you're probably most familiar with. Woven is much more like an actual fabric. So depending on the result that you were looking for from your interfacing, you can choose woven or non-woven. Now why would you choose one over the other? Our interfacing goes into the neckband. That's the only place on this whole garment that is interfaced. This neckband create the structure around the shoulder for everything else to hang from. This is a fairly, I'm going to say maybe a semi-loose fitting, a sort of loose fitting garment. There's about four inches of ease in the waist, in this waist seam that we have here. So a lot of the work is being done here at the shoulder. Now we do have a raglan sleeve and that has a shoulder dart. So there is some other areas of structure here, but this neckband is really doing a lot of the work for that. So you want it to be somewhat sturdy, which is why we are interfacing it to begin with. If you use the non-woven, the papery kind, you're going to get a sort of rapier, lighter weight, less noticeable type of result from the interfaced pieces. If you use the woven, which is a lot like a fabric, you're going to get a little bit more structure with that because it's actually woven. You know how you can rip apart the non-woven interfacing? With the woven kind you can do that. It's literally like fabric. So you're going to double up the structure of this neckband if you use a woven interfacing. So for my cotton fabric and even for my chambray, I'm probably going to stick with the non-woven. But if you're using something like the gauze, if you're using something like linen, you're probably going to want to go for woven just to help maintain the structure of this. No stretching along the bias, no misshapen anything as you continue on with your project. Okay. So interfacing is one of those things where it doesn't seem like it matters until it does. And then you're annoyed and you're like, why did this even happen? So just go get the right stuff to begin with. Link in the description box for the heat and bond woven and non-woven interfacing. Okay. So next we have all of the notions that we are going to need for this. So if you're making the version with the sleeve, you're going to need quarter inch elastic. I do, again, have a preference. I always have a preference. I don't prefer this stuff that you can just get in the package at Joanne. I really love the, I think it's called like soft, all of these words, soft, light, all that kind of stuff kind of are interchangeable in the notions world, but a stomach or fabrics has an elastic that's really, really great. So I will link to that. It's great for garments. So it's not too stiff, you know, it's going to feel like just really comfortable. Not that this is like a super tight fitting elastic band anyways. You can see it's quite a bit bigger than my arm, but you still don't want it to be like crunchy in there. You know what I mean? You want it to be comfortable. So you need a little bit of elastic only for making the sleeved version, the short sleeve version. You don't need any of that, but you do need a little bit more interfacing. So keep that in mind. And then you'll need a 22 inch zipper for the center back. You'll need your machine thread, obviously, serger thread. Obviously, if you have a serger machine needles, because we are sewing this kind of like more stable light to midweight types of fabrics, you can get away with using a universal needle size 70 or 80, depending on the weight of your fabric. If you're going for something that is that sort of like silky type, you're going to want to get a micro text, even something like double gauze, you'd be fine with a universal needle. So probably something you have on hand, but make sure you have three of them because we need one for our machine and two for our serger. And then bobbins, you're going to want to go ahead and load up two bobbins. I'm telling you guys with the amount of gathering stitches we have on this garment, you're going to just want to have us an extra bobbin ready to go because each gathering stitch is two stitches. And then you stitch that to the actual garment, which is a third. So all of those seams, and there are several, you're going to need to do that. One notion that is not listed in here that I think will be helpful as we move forward is some kind of hem tape. While you're at Heaton Bonds website, you can check out their hem tapes. They also have some for woven fabrics and they have them in light, like a light colored tape and a dark colored tape as well. So if you're using a dark fabric, you can use the dark tape and vice versa. If you're using light colored fabric, you can use a light colored tape. We are going to be using that as we work on the facings of these bands in order to get them into place before we stitch in the ditch. I think it's going to be an extra step technically, but it's going to result in a more accurate sort of process. And then you won't have to go back and rip out as much and, you know, resew it or any of that kind of stuff. So grab some hem tape. Again, I'll have that linked in the description box along with the Heaton Bonds interfacing. Alright, so those are all of your notions that you're going to be shopping for and gathering over the next few days. If you have your fabrics in your stash or after your fabric comes, go ahead and pre-wash it. And then you can start working on the pattern pieces and all of the alterations that you are going to need to make. So picking your size is not that difficult on this pattern. If you have the Fast Fit Worksheet, go ahead, use that. I used it for mine and determined that I am a size 16 in the bust and then I need to grade out to an 18 in the waist. And then I can maintain that 18 for the skirt as well, which seems simple enough, right? But it's not because some of these bands, this band here, let me see, any of these? Okay, this entire midsection does not have a side seam. So I have to go into my pattern pieces and create side seams, like where there's the little dot that marks the side seam. Cut right up that piece, add in the amount that you need, and do that all the way around. It sounds tricky, but it's really not because whereas there are no side seams, there are center front seams. So this center front seam here, I just added the half inch, and I also added it to the neck band as well. Then as we go down through here, there's a side seam, or there's, I'm sorry, a center seam in the top band. There is a seam in the midriff, and then the lower band, there is no seam down the center front. So I'm able to add my half inch all the way through here. And then when it comes to the lower band, I'm just cutting that pattern piece at that point, where it's very well notated, and then adding the half inch that I need for that. Now remember, when you are calculating, like the three inches that I need, I divided that by the number of seams that I'm going to have, side seams and center front. So I divided that by three, so I need to add an inch at each section. But when you have two seams that come together, you only need to add half an inch to those, because as they come together, then they create an inch. If you're cutting through your pattern piece, you need to add the full inch, as you don't have the two seam allowances coming together. You're essentially creating space, and so you have to do the full inch in there. So anywhere that you are cutting straight through the pattern piece and not just tacking on to the ends, you need to do the full inch. Anywhere you're just adding on to the end, you need to just do the half inch. Okay? So, and that's for me. That's very, very specific to someone that needs to add to their midsection or add to the circumference anywhere. So the other thing I always, always like to check for is the vertical fit as well. And there are some issues. I'm short-waisted, so I always have to make this adjustment. But I encourage you guys to check your vertical measurements as well, because it's not going to be one of those things that's really easy to adjust after the fact. Because we have the bodice, right? And then three separate pattern pieces that make up the midsection. It's not super obvious or easy to just nip and tuck here and there or take out seam allowances here and there either. So I'm just cautioning you again to, if you want to double check this, do it. That way you can make the adjustments you need to the pattern pieces. And you're not trying to have this make it work moment as you're going through the sewing process. So the waistline is actually five eighths of an inch below this. On the skirt piece, you can see that it is marked at one and a quarter inches below the raw edge, which means after you sew this at the five eighths inch seam allowance, you have an additional five eighths inch of the skirt before you get to your waistline. The waistline on my body is actually way up here. Okay, so you can see that this is not hitting at the right spot. It technically needs to be like up here somewhere. Okay, so this is a little bit long by all of this. All right, but I can't just chop off through here because then that raises the under bust, right? That'll make my under bust hit at the wrong spot. So it's kind of like how we did with the circumference where we took the total amount we needed to increase it by and divided it up by many different places. That's kind of what you have to do here. You can't shorten them by too much though, because the the bands are only so wide. And if you start to, you know, decrease them by half an inch, then you're left with like a sliver, which isn't the point. So I would caution you from shortening it by anything more than a quarter of an inch at each of these points. Okay, at a certain point, you're going to just have to accept that it's going to hang a little bit low on your waist with this design. The only way around that would be to redesign the midriff so it didn't have three sections. We're not here for all that work. I'm showing you now the tissue fitting that I did on my ditto form. This dress form is made to my body. It's like I did a 3D scan and they created this based on the scan of my body. So but because we have the raglan sleeve, which creates part of the neckline and then the neck band, which adds to the, you know, front and back bodice and these three sections on the bottom and all the gathering, which looks really weird whenever you go to tissue fit it. It looks wild and yes, it's a little bit time consuming to put together, but it really does help you see exactly how this is going to fit your body. So get some Swedish tracing paper, you know, so and you can sew that stuff. So sew up, you know, little bits here and there to try and get an idea of how this is going to fit you or, you know, pin together the tissue like I did and tissue fit it to your body, even if you don't have a ditto form, you can still kind of drape it on your body and see how it is going to fit at least vertically with the length. And that's really all that we're trying to check forward here. Okay. And I think that pretty well covers the alterations that I needed for myself. If you come across anything measurement wise or on your tissue fitting and you would like my advice on it, go ahead and purchase the console that I have on my website is $20. It gives you 30 minutes of time with me where we do a zoom and I can fully analyze it for you. The people that have done this in the past have had amazing results night and day from their muslin to their finished garment. So link in the description box for that. All right, so those are alterations. Go ahead and cut out your pattern pieces. This kit is very, very active this afternoon. Cut out your fabric based on the size that you determined and after making your alterations off to the pattern pieces. Go ahead and cut out the interfacing. I know you want to put that part to the end, but or to the very last second, but just don't just go ahead and get it done. It'll make it so much easier as you're sewing. You don't have to like worry about, you know, cutting anything out, getting out your cutting supplies, all of that. Just go ahead and cut out your interfacing and go ahead and apply it as well. Fill the two bobbins that I talked about. If you want to like do like a little quick pass through your machine cleaning it up, changing the needles, all of that kind of stuff, do that. Thread your machine, thread your surgery, get all of that stuff done so that whenever you come in your sewing room for the day, the 15th, that the sew along goes live, everything is ready to go and you don't have to do anything other than start sewing. So that is episode zero, our technical day one of the Sew Along and on the 15th, all of each day of the Sew Along is going to be available. If you are that person that just likes to take a day and power through, you'll be able to do that. If you want to follow along with the schedule that I put together, you can do that too because they'll still be broken down by individual days. But, like I said, I think she's going to be really cute, really great to sew and just like a lot of fun. I hope you like gathers. I really hope you like gathering because there is a lot of it. But that is going to do it for me today. I will see you guys back here on the 15th to actually sew New Look 6728. Check the description box for every link that I mentioned and we'll get you all squared away before we start sewing. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you guys soon. Bye!