Everybody’s Talking Sewing

I’d forgotten about a characteristic of cotton batiste that I really love: it just plain looks better after it softens from being ironed. Weird huh?

The slight texture of the fabric and sense of ‘age’ seems to come though after that just-pressed look is gone. It’s a rather delicate fabric to sew with, but the results are simply wonderful.

So what brought this to mind is I just finished attaching the skirt to the bodice; it’s not pressed - not even the new seams, inside facing isn’t finished, skirt lining not in - but I’m so happy with it!

Some pictures for you. The first is a full length view of the front of the dress with the back pinned closed.

Next is a close-up of the bodice-skirt joining, and lastly a small view of the hem. That hem is hand picked; took about two-hours to do.

I tried a machine blind hem on some test fabric first - played on both sewing machines - but I just didn’t like the way it looked. Then I decided to try some decorative embroidery stitching wondering if that was going to create that perfect something. Nope. That just detracted from the look even more!

Remember my first description of hand sewing the binding on the sleeves? Deja-vu all over again with the hem! This time though I kept shifting the hem to different heights trying to get the best non-blurry view.

See my glasses are designed specifically for my sitting distance to the computer monitor screens - not for hand sewing. The monitors distance is about 18″-19″ from me. You cannot hand-sew at that distance; well I can’t easily at least. It was an interesting exercise once I figured out why I was having a totally different problem trying to sew the hem.

I’m going to make good and sure Conner wears this Christening Dress for at least six-hours… wonder if I can tie in a fair-use clause?

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Well I am - literally! I’m really happy with the embellishment treatment on the skirt… nothing like sweating out the details.

I ended up with three groups of three-vertical embroidery designs running down the front of the skirt. Repeated the pattern used on the bodice and added a complimentary version that was just a tad lighter.

Plus I got to finally do my box pleats!

Next was sewing the back of the skirt and adding the little ones name and birth date. Normally I’d do that about 2-months after the dress was sewn - but in this case our early arrival meant I could do it now.

Actually, it was a whole lot easier on the nerves being able to do it at this point. Before I’d be a basket-case adding the name to a fully finished and used dress.

What if I misspelled the name? Or tore the fabric? Or lined it up badly? Or ran out of thread? Or….or….or… yep I’m my own worst enemy sometimes. Sorry the picture is so bad, but you get the idea.

Okay time to sew the skirt sides. Because I used a French Seam on the sleeve underarm seams, and the back of the skirt, it stood to reason I’d do the same for the sides.

Pin, sew, press, trim to under a quarter-of-an-inch, re-press, turn the fabric inside out, and fold and pin to finish the French seam. Wait. What? No! NONONONONO! I didn’t - did I really?

Yes, Ann you did.

I sewed a beautiful seam, or it would be if I had been doing a normal seam. But for a French seam it was inside out. Now some people at this point would cry, but not me. I proceeded to question - quite loudly - my parentage, sewing skills, intelligence factor, common sense… and then I dug up my repertoire of swearing in Polish and German.

I remembered a lot!

I flatly refused to cut off that seam, that meant only one alternative - I got to try out a new rolled hem foot on a machine I’ve never used it on, on a Christening Dress for my nephew. No pressure here.

After several tense moments of testing - it sewed beautifully. I love my Janome machine.

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