I was so excited when I found this fabric. It met my daughter's requirements for "not girly" and was a nice small geometric that I thought would match well. However, I made a huge mistake by not checking to see that is was printed on the true grain and guess what. It wasn't. What I thought would be a quick and easy match job turned into a nightmare!
Luckily, I have a few tricks to deal with that sort of thing, and that starts with the right tools: Lots of pins to help match pattern points, wax crayon to mark cutting lines, and chalk to mark seam lines and pattern marks.
I'm a huge fan of chalk, and always mark my seam lines when doing precision sewing. For the center front piece below, I placed the pattern on the fabric so the center front fell at the center of the fabric design. I marked the seam with chalk, then folded the fabric right side out along the center front. Smoothed the fabric gently, then gave several swift taps along the seam line to transfer the chalk to the unmarked side. Open it up a viola, all the lines have been transferred.
Lots of patience and some fiddling with layout, got decent results for the shoulder seams above-left. But nothing could give a perfect continuous pattern match on the center back, so I settled for a mirror image match. Because the pattern wasn't true to the grain, I ended up sewing the seams from the seams I cared about by hand from the right side. I went back with my machine to reinforce from the wrong side where necessary.
With the bodice sewn, it was time to check and see how the skirt was going to fall over the petticoat.
Not bad. though it is hard to get a good feel for the finished product with the seam allowances poking out.
Up Next
Pt. 4 - Finished Dress
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- Amy