My First Dress

Right before all the illness and the shutdowns, I made a trip to JoAnn’s in search of a dress pattern. This was part of an idea I had to expand my wardrobe using more flattering and classic patterns and self-chosen fabrics while expanding my sewing skills. Naturally, JoAnn’s seemed a good place to start to find a pattern for a beginning sewer.

I found a pattern for a dress that looked classic and fairly simple as it’s just a wrap dress with a belt. The pattern was from Butterick and said ‘easy’ on it, which my mother told me means they hold your hand a lot more, give you more detailed instructions, and explain what the sewing terms in the directions mean. That all ended up being VERY helpful as I’m still quite a beginner.

Well, then we got shut down and I had a fabric with some pink on it but I wasn’t really fond of that much and decided against using it to make this dress. When everything opened back up, I went to Hobby Lobby and there found this beautiful, slightly off white fabric with teal flowers and green sprigs on it. It was lovely and on clearance, so I bought the rest of what they had of it (maybe 5-6 yards, I’m not really sure). I probably should have looked at exactly how much fabric I needed and only bought that, but I guess now there’s more for another time.

First, I needed to cut out my patterns, pin them to my fabric, and cut them all out. Thankfully, the directions were very clear on how things needed to be laid out and cut, but this was still the scariest part of the project for me. Once you cut, you can’t go back.

Once the pieces were cut, I could breathe easier. 🙂 Next, I sewed the easiest pieces together- the three pieces for the skirt and the darts in the bodice and the three bodice pieces. After that, it got a bit more complicated. Most of what I knew how to sew before was straight lines and putting things together, and things like collars and sleeves are not exactly straight lines.

I did have to buy interfacing for some of the pieces, which did involve my first time going to a fabric cutting counter at a store. 😀 I was kind of proud of that as it made me feel like a real sewer. The interfacing ironed onto once of the collar pieces, and the four facing pieces (which are pieces that you put on the ends of the bodice and skirt to give them more structure and weight… at least I think). The iron was one of my best friends during this project, and not just because of interfacing. Each piece was ironed before I sewed them together and each seam was ironed after being sewn to make it work properly.

The next big thing I sewed was the collar, which was a tricky piece.

As I attempted to put it on the bodice, the directions became increasing vague. I ended up video calling my mom and had her walk me through the process of pinning and basting (aka. putting some big stitches in so that it holds properly before you actually sew it together) the collar onto the bodice. Mom’s are very helpful for that! 🙂 It took some wrestling and lots of pinning and checking to make sure I had it centered, but it worked!

The sleeves were the trickiest bit, probably because I did them on my machine, which I think in hindsight was not the easiest thing to do. Next time, I think sewing them by hand would be easier because it’s just hard to keep the fabric from bunching and sewing things you’re not supposed to. However, after much fidgeting it did work out and wasn’t too hard to fix when I sewed the sleeve weird and it bunched.

Finally, all that was left to do was to sew the hooks and eyes, hem the skirt, and hand sew the facings on the bodice because I think I goofed and they didn’t lay right.

So that was it! It took me two weeks from when I started to when I finished, but it would have taken less time if I’d continuously worked on it every day, and if I’d seen the bit where I needed to buy hooks and eyes before starting. Overall, not as tricky as I thought, though my skills were stretched and I learned some new ones along the way. Is is perfect-nope, but I’m quite happy with it which is good enough for a first dress.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my little journey into the sewing world 🙂