Tired of your old clothes? Or even buying clothes that look almost if not the same with your neighbor’s or your friends? Better still, would you like to earn money or save money using your own clothes? The best answer to all three questions is to alter your clothes. Dressmaking could be Fun and Profitable. Intimidating as it may seem, you need not take up Fashion Design Courses to do so. You just need the right measurements and a pattern and altering the dress or even dressmaking in itself would be a snap.
Take for example sundresses. Traipsing in them could make one feel so comfortable especially during the hot days sad to say though that they are expensive. The good news is, they are very easy to make. Just take your long skirts out of the dresser, or try to make one, attach a blouse that fits well, saw them together and there you have it, a sundress.
Sounds simple enough? Here’s something even simpler to do. Get a large shirt, cut the front from bottom to top, saw buttons on it. After you’re done, cut out the area from the chest lengthwise to include taking of the sleeves. Flip the sides and sew in (try using pins to help you set the folding in place). Then simply attach straps and a belt and you have your sundress.
Imagination, measurement and pattern are the key to dressmaking. The simplest of them all would be sewing baby dresses. Have you ever tried sewing pillowcases? Or tubeless shirts you don’t want to wear? Did you ever notice that the tubeless shirt is almost the same with a pillow case with only one side sewn up? Let’s start altering the pillow case or the tubeless shirt of your choice. For the armhole, you have to make sure that you have a little groove on each sides, this is preferably about a 2 inch cut like an arc.
Sew in a fabric of your choice at the hems or seams to add a little zest and life to the dress. The seams you have at the top should have elastic’s in them to have (this is dependent on the child’s chest measurement). Elastics should be sewn both in front and at the back.
The armholes (the 2 inch cuts we left) should be sewn with biases as nice little straps. Be sure to add extra length for the bias in case you would like to tie it up in a bow.
So far we’ve been through three sundresses made out of clothes (not to mention pillow cases) that apparently may be made into dresses without much effort. Sewing from scratch is more or less the same. The only difference is, you can use your old clothes to make patterns or you simply have to make patterns for designs you have in mind before cutting the fabric of your choice.
We mentioned earlier about bias. For the benefit of the neophyte sewer, let us define it to include useful hints and terms used in sewing. Lengthwise grain is the threads running across the fabric parallel to the edge of the fabric. Crosswise grain is of fabric running perpendicular to the lengthwise grain. Sounds confusing? Lay your fabric down with the top side facing you. The lengths of fabric running horizontally are the Lengthwise grain and the lengths of fabric running against them are the crosswise grains. Now, going to biases, they are the thread lines that have a right angle between the grains. Or just simply cut the fabric diagonally to create a bias. Cutting the fabric in this manner will give the fabric stretching capabilities to be sewn and hang differently from cutting the fabric lengthwise or crosswise. Bias is used of inseams, armholes and areas where piping is needed.
In special cases where you may like to sew a skirt perhaps with a bias grain, be sure to hang the fabric for at least 24 hours before sewing it. This is to ensure that the grains settle after stretching as you don’t’ want them stretching during sewing or even after, right? Bias grains need special handling when attempting to sew them as regular fabric clothes always be sure to remember that else your dresses may seem askew everywhere and you’d end up redoing the full dress. If you attempt to hem it prior to hanging it, the hems may curl and you might be wondering how that happened when your cloth or fabric looks straight enough.
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