Sew Easy #10, How to make Your Waist Back

and now we're ready to start a new unit of  our dress do the flexibility of the unit construction method of sewing you could  pick up and work on any unit you wish but to keep from handling the units any more  than necessary it would be well for us to use a unit or make a unit that will join to the blouse  front since that's the one with which we started so with this demonstration  we'll make the gloss back while the pattern's still on we'll  want to mark where the center back is and as you remember that was  laid on the fold of your fabric now here's a little trick so that you can see  where the center back is after the pattern's been removed just snip off the corner here  at the lower edge and up here at the neckline make your snip deep enough they'll make a  notch but not so deep it'll weaken the seam we'll unpin the pattern from the fabric and then these nicks will  establish our center back the first thing we'll do is space stitch  my shoulder line will be space stitched from the high point down with the grain line establish your guide according to  the seam allowance on your pattern and then bring the edge of your fabric up  near the guide but not quite touching it you'll remember that stay  stitching is a row of stitching to make the threads of the fabric stay  in place for reconstructing the garment stay stitching is made with matching  thread and regular length stitch keep the edges of your fabric clean by  clipping off these long ends of thread we'll stay stitch the neckline from the high point  to the center and the same on this other side from the high point down to the center so that  each side will be space stitched with the grain i'll point out the second use for this face  stitching at the neckline but i put on the collar and we'll go down the lower part of the blouse  for our pattern tells us to put in the gathering and the gathering stitch is similar to the  e-stitch except just a little bit longer in order for you to see how that will be in  use i'm going to put it on this small blouse and the first row stitching is on  the seam line so push your fabric right up next to your guide and lower your needle the second row stitching will go in about  fourth of an inch below the seam line even though we're not going to be gathering  this up until we join the blouse the skirt some of you may be curious to see how these work you see we have two rows of stitching and four  threads so we'll take all these two lower threads that came from the bobbin hold on to them tightly  and lift or slip the fabric over the threads you can see how easily the fabric slips over  them even though the stitches were not very long and now to put the gathering into a blouse the first row right on the seam line then we'll  put the second row a quarter of an inch down this will finish all the  flat work on our blouse back then we're ready to start shaping  it by making the darts the neckline my pattern tells me that this  is the full line for the dart but since it doesn't tell me how big to make the  dart let's go back to your direction sheet it says to stitch 1/8 inch from the full line of the  neck edge tapering to nothing at the lower edge stitch the dart with regular length stitch now i'd like to start at the point  in order to have a smooth dart so we'll put our needle down on these this  crosswise mark I think you can now see the advantage marking across the point of your dart  so you can have both darts exactly the same length leave your needle down and slip a piece of paper under there for a guide  and measure the eighth inch you'll notice we back stitch to tack  the end of that row of stitching now we're ready to tie the ends of these threads and after this we're ready to press shape the ends of the darts over  the curve of the tailor's ham and then press vertical darts toward the center press from the wrong side and then from the  right and this will complete this back unit my dress doesn't require a zipper but some  of you may have patterns that ask for zippers down the back so let's take time for me to  show you how to put a zipper in at this time first a zipper could be put into a back  with a seam or into a back that has no seam i've chosen the one with the seam because  the zipper will be covered and will look neater to save confusion I've selected a different fabric  and I've completed some of the preliminary steps I stitched my seam up to the  indication mark on my pattern and tacked it by back stitching and  leaving the needle down lengthen the stitch to a basting stitch and base it right on up  the rest of the seam then press the seam open now to get my machine ready I'll have  to change to the zipper according foot in order for you to see each step more  clearly i'm using white thread and a contrasting colored zipper but of course you  will want to use matching thread and zipper be sure you have the link  zipper your pattern asks for open your zipper and put the right  side of your zipper down on your seam but the teeth of the zipper follow the seam  or the stitching line and the end or the stop be right down here for the basting started then  we'll stitch this on one side just to anchor it and close the zipper and flatten out the  garment and stitch from the wrong side leave the needle down and turn a square  corner and stitch right on across the end of the zipper making the same number of  stitches on each side of your seam line then reach in here and clip the basting stitches and if you've used a long basting stitch  you'll find that easy to spread these apart and clip them and we've said many times to finish  all you can on one unit before you go on to the next and that would include putting in the zipper  when it's called far in the back of your blouse