Sew Easy: #7, How to Cut Out your Dress

[Music] [Music] today i'm ready to cut out the dress since i've taken the body measurements and altered the pattern according to those measurements and i've made sure that my fabric is pre-shrunk and the grain line is straight so now i'm ready to cut since i want to get this dress cut out and marked for you in a little more than 10 minutes i've asked mrs marling to help me cut it and mark it now let's get on with the cutting before you actually do start cutting your dress i would suggest that you review the direction sheet but there's a wealth of material here cutting notes layout notes marking but right now let's go up to this these directions for cutting out the interfacing first of all according to the directions sheet these are the three pieces of pattern that need to be interfaced the collar the cuff and the front facing now the collaring cuffs need to have extra body so we'll use this piece of batiste that has been shrunk and straightened we'll first place the collar and our pattern says to place this single line on the fold so be sure you have it right on the fold and pin it in place next the cuffs and we'll need to cut two so we'll place that on the double thickness and here we have grain line which means that this line must be parallel to the selvage and to be sure that it is parallel use a ruler and measure from each end of the line to make sure that it's equal distance and when you do get it parallel to the selvage pin it in place now the front facing needs to have a stiffer interfacing in order to preserve the design of the dress so we use this piece of pellon this is a non-woven fabric so it doesn't have a grain line it doesn't have grain we don't have to observe grain line of the pattern so just fold this place the pattern and pin it so we'll have two interfacings and now mrs [merling?] will you finish pinning these and cut those out for me here is a layout according to the view we're going to use the size and the width of our fabric and you'll notice between this crosswise fold of material and the lengthwise it looks as if it's been cut but i'd like to show you how you can fold your fabric and place your pattern without cutting unfold your fabric place it flat on the table with the wrong side up a single thickness then take one of your larger pieces of pattern to the skirt in this case and place it along the selvage edge of the material then we need to check that grain line we'll do that by measuring from the marked line out to the selvage and then measure the other end of this line out to the selvage and bring your pattern so that those will measure exactly the same and when you get the grain line parallel to the selvage put some pins on the grain line marking to hold it in place then we're ready to put the other piece of skirt on and since we don't have an up and down to our design i can reverse this piece of pattern and shove this right over next to the first piece and then we'll check the grain line on this be sure the grain line is straight with the selvage helen will you let me have the facing pattern now the interfacing is left pinned to the facing pattern then we'll pin all this in place right in this spot and i'll just anchor that with a couple of pins and check the grain line later now we have a skirt pattern on two thicknesses of fabric so we'll pin right on through both thicknesses be sure your salvages are together and pull this right down through the center crease and you can fold it a little bit more to get it out of the way now we're ready to put the back gloss on we'll place the back pattern next and the pattern says right along here to place this line on a fold being on the fold it's automatically on the grain and while i pin this in place helen will you check the grain line and pin this front pattern right about there i'm going to put only a few pins in at this time and later i'll put more in before i actually start cutting that but the part i want you to notice is right here the armhole where these two patterns overlap the patterns themselves are overlapping but the heavy or cutting lines do not overlap this will save you material we'll fold this up so we can get to the rest of our fabric and the next piece of pattern is a sleeve now helen will you check the grain line and pin that in place while i put the collar on the most interfacing is still pinned to our collar pattern we'll place this right on the fold and since we need to cut two pieces for the collar we'll mark the placement of this this collar there and then move it up for the second cutting and we'll anchor that in place with a pin then the cuffs come right in here and since we're only planning our pattern at this point i won't be too concerned about the grain line we need to cut this a second time so i'll mark the first placement with the pin and move the cuff up to this second point and anchor that now you may have been wondering how i knew to cut two sections for the cuff and two for the collar but on the layout you'll find one picture of the cuff in a solid line and one in a dotted line and that always indicates to cut twice now we've finished planning for each piece of our pattern as soon as helen finishes checking the grain line and pinning this last piece we'll start cutting from this end leave the fabric as flat as possible when you start to cut your material by keeping your scissors on the table top we're cutting right along the cutting line of the pattern and this has been cut off when we cut the interfacing so that you can see what i'm referring to here let's look at this piece that hasn't been cut yet this heavy line is the cutting line as it's indicated and the margin will be cut off as you cut out your pattern then when you get up here to the notch cut it out away from the pattern we never cut notches in toward the seam for that weakens it following the cutting line and cutting out the notches are the two main points i wanted to show you about cutting and now helen will you take this and finish cutting it out while we discuss some other problems if you'd like to stand while cutting you can improvise a cutting table from an adjustable ironing board set at your height and a folding section from your dining room table pad now for the pattern markings we use dressmaker's carbon to transfer the pattern markings to the fabric we're going to use a very dark carbon so it will be able to let you see the markings but we suggest that you pick out a color that is as nearly as possible the color of your dress but will still show up as you want to work with it you may use a tracing wheel but i'm going to use a table knife and transferring the markings to my print material now helen do you have a piece cut out that i might demonstrate on we need to mark this dart we'll do that by placing a piece of carbon underneath the fabric with the carbon side up take a second piece of carbon the carbon side down and place between the pattern and the fabric use a ruler make a straight line and mark then be sure to mark the end of the dart the line next we'll need to mark the center front and the buttonholes that would be this line right down here and the button holes be sure you mark the end of the button holes and then up here we'll mark the clip line by coming straight down on the line here and then cross it then the other place that we need to mark is down here the pleat atn the waistline with straight lines and be sure to mark the end of course you'll want to transfer the markings from the other pieces of your pattern next time i'm going to show you how easy sewing can be if you follow the unit method of construction [Music]