How to Sew a Jersey Dress on an Overlocker

[Music] hi i'm lucy from so essential and i'm here today to show you step by step how to sew a knit or jersey dress or t-shirt i'll take you through every step i'm not going to show you the pressing and we have got a video on our channel of how to press seams i'm not showing you that part but i'm going to show you exactly how to sew it together what tapes what interfacing what stabilizers i use that you can get really good results with these fabrics i'll be sewing the entire thing on my overlocker but you can apply all of this to using a sewing machine as well so i'm sure everybody will pick up lots of useful tips and information here this is the dress that i'm going to be making which is simplicity 8982 i have shortened the sleeves and i'll show you how i did that in the video and then i did alter the length as well it's a lot longer than this on the pattern but i just shortened it um by cutting it shorter reducing the length on the pattern but yeah it's a lovely simple easy to wear everyday dress that if you can get your head around these techniques on a simple garment like this it will just give you so much confidence for certain confidence for sewing with knit and jersey fabrics going forward and you can apply all of the different techniques and methods to most of the garments you'll want to make using those fabrics so everything i talk about today is available on our lovely website and you'll find links to everything i mentioned below all the products all the stabilizers interfacings the links are below if you like what you see today please like and subscribe because every friday i bring you a video packed full of sewing goodness and if you can't wait a whole week do follow us on instagram because i share posts on the grid every day there of what i'm making and little tips and techniques so let's get started and i'll show you how to make this lovely simple t-shirt dress so i'm going to start by sewing this center back seam you can see i've got the two bodice pieces pinned together down the center back seam and i'm going to be saying with a 5 8 seam so i know i want to be lining the raw edge of my fabric up with the r marking on this machine now if you struggle to remember or you're not sure which marking to line up with just use a sewing gauge or a tape measure just to remind yourself just line it up with the leftmost needle and just check that that's 5 8 and i'm also using a red mat underneath my eye overlocker which we do stock on our site i'll put a link to that below as well and that just helps to dull the noise a bit of the overlock and not not a great deal but it also stops it from jumping around on the table which i really like so that kind of annoys me when things start jumping around so let's just go ahead and sew the scene [Music] and you can see there we've got a lovely neat center back seam there i'm sewing this on my baby.desire3 overlocker cover lock machine and just get brilliant results every time with that machine so i'll just give that a press now to one side and then we'll be ready for the next step so after we've sewn the back center back seam together the next step is to sew the shoulder seams but we need to stabilize these seams as well if you don't stabilize the shoulder seams in a knit or jersey garment with wash and wear it can stretch out of shape and that will change the complete look and fit of the garment so i've pinned the shoulder seams together on both sides and i've pinned with the front bodice piece i've put the pins on top of the front bodice piece so you can see that there that that's the front bodice piece and i've pinned like so and that's because when i stabilize the shoulder seams i like to use this six millimeter ribbon that we stock i'll put links to all of this below for you this comes in a wide range of colors so you can pick one to match um the color theme of your project that you could have a nice pop of colour or contrast and it's just a really nice pretty way to stabilize the shoulder seams but the reason you need to pin it on the top of the front bodice piece is that when you sew that into the seam if you sew it into the seam on the on the front bodice piece it will allow you to press that seam to the back which is what you want and if you sewed it onto the back bodice piece with that layer of fabric on the top then unfortunately your seams would want to come forward and you always want to press your seams to the back on your shoulders so to do this method there's a little gap at the front of my overlocker in the foot and i've just fed the ribbon through that and i've sewn a few stitches onto the ribbon just to get it started so it's secured there now like so and then i just need to position the shoulder seam correctly so let's just get that lined up nicely and i'm going to be using the same marking again because i'm saying with a 5 8 seam again so i'm just lining the edge of the fabric with the r marking for the 5 8 seam and then i'm just going to sew in the normal way but as i sew it will attach this ribbon to the shoulder seam and stabilize it for me now one thing you might want to test before you do this as well i always test on scraps of fabric to make sure it doesn't affect how the fabric reacts because you might need to alter your differential feed for example i didn't on this fabric it turned out fine and but that's just worth noting i always have a little practice on a scrap of fabric first you can see i'm just lining the edge of the fabric up in the normal way and it's just feeding that ribbon through and sewing it into the seam for and then i can just cut that excess off there and you can see we've got a lovely neat seam there that's been stabilized by the ribbon and will want to be pressed nicely towards the back of the garment so i'll just repeat that on the other side trim off the excess ribbon at either end and you've got a lovely neat stabilized shoulder seam there now i did want to show you an alternative product because you might not want to use the ribbon we do have this stay tape and by drips which is a transparent tape that won't fray i'll just get a bit of fabric on here so i can show you so you can see it more clearly it won't fray you can trim trim it down trim the width down if you want to um but this does exactly the same job that will stabilize those seams for you as well and i just applied that in exactly the same way as i do the ribbon so let's just show you on a scrap of fabric how i would do that obviously i'm going to do the other shoulder seam in ribbon on on the dress that i'm making so i want them to match i wouldn't want them to be hard but i'll just show you this on a scrap of fabric so you can see the alternative options that you've got so again i've fed it through the front of the foot i'm going to sew a few stitches just to start it off and that's secured now so then when i put the fabric under the foot it will just sew it into the seam in the same way don't need to be as accurate here because this is just a scrap of fabric to show you but just sew away as normal again i can just trim that excess off and again a lovely neat finish there you can see that's sewing beautifully into that seam now there is it is wider than the stitches are so you could either trim that down beforehand or you could just go back now and just trim off the excess underneath the stitches if you wanted to which is what i usually do but you might be happy to just leave it as it is but i i usually would go back now and just trim that excess off so here we have the front bodice and the back body sewn together at the shoulder seams with that lovely neat narrow ribbon finish there and then i just want to show you how i like to prepare everything for the neckline so the first thing i like to do is also add a little bit of stability around the neckline itself and the product i use to do that is this viselene seam tape which you can buy by the meter it's available in black and white and really it's just like an interfacing it's a stretch interfacing but it's cut in a bias tape so it will fit around the curves of that neckline really nicely and it's not as heavy as i wouldn't want to ever use anything like the ribbon around the neckline that would be far too heavy and add too much bulk um but this is lovely and light but what it will do i just iron that onto the curves and it just means that when i'm sewing it doesn't stretch the neckline out of shape um i also should mention here that i quite like to sometimes tack the neckband on with my sewing machine before i take it to the overlocker so again just by having this extra stability there that just means that if anything does go awry i can unpick it and it's probably going to be okay and this team tapes about 5 8 of an inch wide so i can just iron that straight on and it will just sit within the seam allowance you could trim it down if you wanted to if you're working with a narrower seam allowance but that's how i like to do it so if i just show you i'll just iron that on around the front of the neckline and also the back and you don't use any steam for this just apply a hot iron and it will just attach itself to the fabric and i've got a lovely little prim iron that i meant to bring to work with me today for this task because it's a bit easier than using a full size iron for a little fiddly task like this um but i forgot to bring it so i'm using my full size iron but i would recommend using a smaller one if you've got one and again i'll pop a link to the prim iron below for you i wouldn't usually do it like this i would usually do it on a single layer but i just wanted you to be able to visualize how how the garment was coming together but let's just put that on a single layer because what you don't want to do obviously is iron it to the right side of of the other part of the garment so let's just you can see how that's fitting nicely around that curve just apply a bit more heat and then i just like to snip it off at the shoulder seam like so because obviously you're not going to iron it over over that um narrow ribbon let's just make sure that's fully attached there we go and that's just added a bit of stability there and then i'm going to do the same around the back of the neckline as well okay so you can see there that i find that all the way around the neck edge like so then i want to show you what i like to do with the neckband so with the neckband i just want to mention actually as well that we do have a prim alternative to the vilene steam tape that i showed you as well both of those products are available on the website so i'll pop the links to those below for you as i've mentioned um but with the neckband what i like to do again to just give it a little bit more body really i think on ready to wear um garments you often find that the neckband feels a little bit thicker than the rest of the garments and so i like to just iron some of this stretch interfacing onto the wrong side of the fabric we do this in black and in white and that just gives it a little bit more stability and a little bit more body so i just ironed that onto the back side of the neck band and then i stitch this shorts lengths together with a 5 8 seam and once that's done you can turn the neckband through and then you want to fold it lengthways and press it so that it's ready to attach to the garments and in true blue peter style i've already got one prepared any of those of you who aren't from the uk blue piece is just a children's tv program where they do lots of crafty stuff um and they always have one prepared so that's my little reference there but yeah you can see that's just got a little bit more body so that's now ready to attach to the neckline that we've just prepared as well all of these things are completely down to personal preference you know i wouldn't like to say this is the right way you should always do this and these are just the things that i've done and work for me and i do always test on scraps of fabric if i'm unsure and i'd highly recommend that you do the same but it's definitely worth having a play around with some of these products and just seeing if that helps you and gets you better results than you have done without them so we've got the dress here and then i've got the neck band here and obviously we need to attach the neckband to the dress so to do this what i always like to do is quarter the neckline so find the points a quarter of a wet the way around the neckline so four points and then i do the same with the neck band and that way i know i'm distributing the neckband equally around the neckline so the way that i do this is we'll do it inside okay eggs it kind of makes it a bit easier for you to see a bit more visible but if you put the two shoulder seams on top of each other we've already got a center back seam here on this pattern anyway but we want to find the center front but if we put the shoulder seams on top of each other like so that will give us the center front point so that's half way around the neckline and then if we want we could assume that the shoulder seams are quarter of the way around but they're not they're usually slightly further back than that so what we can do to find the midway points between the front and the back the center front and the center back is if we line those up and then line the edges of the fabric up you'll see there that actually that quarter way point is slightly forward of the actual shoulder seam so i've just marked that there and then i'll do the same on the other side so again it's further forward than the actual shoulder seam so we'll just position a pin there so we've now what we say quartered that neckline we can see that there's four points that we've marked there the center back the center front and then the midway point between the two let's just adjust that pin so it's nice and straight and then we want to do the same with the neckband so we've got a center back seam here where we've joined it so if i just lay it flat with that center back seam there that will give me the center front and i can just put a pin in there and then again if i do the same approach with this as i did with the neckline if i put the center front and center back on top of each other that will give me the quarter way points for the neckband and then what you want to do is join them up so we're going to turn the fabric of the dress so it's the right way out and we've got the center back here the center back seam there we've got a center back seam here on our neckband so i'm going to start by marrying those two up and just pin that in place and then i've got my quarter waypoint marked under my neckline and on my neckband here so i'm just going to match those up and then the same again at the front here just match those up and pin in place and then match up the other quarter way point and you're going to be sewing from the side of the neck band so you want your pins really to be on top of the neckband okay and what you can see there is that actually the neck band is shorter that's that's the neckline there and this is the neckband here so it's actually shorter than the neckline which is what we want because when we sew we need to stretch the neckband slightly to match and that will prevent the neckband from being baggy it will mean that it's nice and tight and it holds everything in place now it is a bit of a sort of dark art really it kind of takes a bit of practice to know just how much you need to stretch it you can do it too tight and that can cause problems but if you don't stretch it enough um then it will be baggy and loose but you never want to stretch the neckline of the dress itself you just want to stretch the neck band so that it fits that neckline and it should just be a slight stretch it shouldn't be overly stretched as i say so if i just pin that in place there what you will notice as well is if you've if you have had to stretch it i've done that very well let's just do that again if you have had to stretch it what you will notice is when you look inside you'll see little bubbles almost little sort of um humps in the neckline fabric and that will just tell you that you've got it right when you can see there's a little sort of ripple effect almost on the fabric on the inside that will tell you that that you are stretching your neckband to fit that and you've probably got that about right and then my top tip really for this is if you're nervous and you're not sure if you've got it right just tack it on your sewing machine first with a long tacking stitch and check that you're happy with it before you take it to the overlocker and i'm just going to continue around and just pin the rest of the neckband in place now okay so you can see that that neckband's pinned in place now and ready to take over to the machine if you want to tack it first or the overlocker and you can see what i was talking about with the ripple effect inside and that just means that as you say you just need to stretch that neckband so that it sits nice and flat and just keep checking as you sew that everything's sitting nice and flat another little tip before you take it to the sewing machine or overlocker as well is that because you're sewing in the round you're going to have to overlap at the end of the seam however with this little tip you don't have to do that and this only works if you if you're sewing on an overlocker but when you sew on an overlocker it will sew the stitches like it has done here on this center back seam and it will cut off the excess fabric the other side now i know that these stitches are a quarter of an inch wide so i know because i've seen a 5 8 seam i know that it's trimmed off 3 8 of an inch off excess fabric as it's sewn so if i want to get this positioned really nicely under the foot of my overlocker when i go to sew it if i look at for the back so i always think whenever you're doing anything like this go towards the back because if it goes wrong you know it's not going to be such an issue it's less visible so i always like to start at the back but if i trim 3 8 of an inch so i can see that 3 8 of an inch is there if i trim to that point let's just mark that with a pin you'd be better off marking that with the chaco pen i just haven't got one handy but if you trim to there like so and then probably want to make it just a little bit longer to about there if you just cut that section out of your neckline and your neckband that will allow you to position the fabric under the foot of the overlocker and it'll mean you don't have to overlap at the end because you've already trimmed the excess off so it will all become clear when i show you on the actual overlocker but you can just see i've cut out a section there and when i take it over to the overlocker and start sewing it you'll see how that works okay so here we've got the neckband and dress pinned together and i'm just going to lift the foot of the overlocker up and i've got that cut out section that i just showed you i'm going to fit that underneath the foot and then i can line the blade up with where the fabric juts out so you see that section there where it juts back out if i line the blade with that it means i can just start sewing in the right place and then i can continue cutting the excess fabric off as i work my way around the neck band so let's just get everything positioned so it's nice and flat we've got got to get the foot in the right position make sure everything's nice and flat and sitting nicely underneath and then i'm just going to pop that foot down and if you remember i said i need to just stretch the neck band to match the neckline as i sew my way around the other thing to watch out for is just make sure that your shoulder seams are pointing them in the right direction as well when you sew over those that can be really annoying if you accidentally push them in the wrong direction so just watch out for that and just take it nice and easy as you work your way around and then you can see here that we're just going to join up with that original line of stitching and finish off everything nice and neatly and there you have it the neckband is sewn in place and everything's finished off nice and neatly at the end with no need for overlapping okay so we've done the hardest part of any knit or jersey project which is to get the neck band in and i'm happy that that looks like that will sit nice and flat it's the right sort of amount of tension and i'll just show you on the wrong side as well it looks lovely and neat overlocked in place you can top stitch that down with a twin needle or cover stitch if you want to to keep the seam allowances down i generally find that that isn't necessary and they do just stay down anyway um but the next step is to attach our sleeves now when i make a jersey t-shirt dress or t-shirt i like to attach them at the iron hole first and then do a continuous seam down the sleeve seam and down the side seams it's just really quick and easy and it's easier sometimes um getting a sleeve in on the flat rather than doing it in the round and setting it in the traditional way i'll just show you i have altered the sleeve piece um because i wanted to make a short sleeve rather than a long sleeve so i just folded the excess fabric up that i didn't want um to use and then i folded the pattern piece back on itself and it just showed me how much to add the hem there so that when i do hem it it will all meet together nicely so that's just a good little tip and then we're going to get the sleeve and attach it at the armhole so i've already started doing this one and i'm going to work from the side of the sleeve you want to use your notches to match everything up so here i've got the double notch and here i've got the single notch and i've matched those up and then i just need to match up the shoulder seam now i always do a forward shoulder adjustment so i like to position the shoulder seam i have to position it um just towards the back because i've moved that forward i position it half an inch behind where it actually is and that's because that's how much i've moved it and i just find that the sleeve seems to hang and sit better if i position it where it should be rather than moving it to match the forward shoulder adjustment and that's just something i've found out from trial and error really that that seems to work better and the sleeve seems to hang better if i do that there's a little bit of ease in these sleeves so just need to work that into the fabric and as you sew on your overlocker that will help you to ease that in as well if you're sewing on a sewing machine i'd recommend using a walking foot um that that really helps with jersey fabrics it'll really help you to feed the two layers of fabric through at the same rate and not stretch you know one layer more than the other um or at all really just feed it through nice and evenly as the name suggests so i'm just going to work my way around the armhole and then work my way around the other armhole and then we'll take it over to the overlocker and sew everything in place okay so both sleeves are pinned in around the shoulder and the armhole and we'll just take those over to the overlocker to sew those into position now okay so now we're going to say the 5 8 seam around the armhole and the shoulder and we're using a 5 8 seam again okay so the sleeves are sewn in around the sleeve head now so i just need to go and give that a good press i am pressing every seam as i go i always press every seam as i go and never cross the seam until it's been pressed um but i'm not showing you every time i press there is a video on our channel about pressing if you want more information on that here we have the dress so far we've got the neck band in the shoulder seam sewn the sleeve head seam sewn so now we're going to sew the side seam and under arm seam in one continuous motion which i spoke to you about previously so you just put the garment right sides together i've got some long threads here um off the sleeve head seam i just leave those because that seam is going to get crossed anyway when i sew this so i don't need to worry about securing those they'll just get chopped off as i say you might prefer to secure them with the tapestry needle and just thread them back through these stitches here i have pressed all of the seams as i've gone i haven't including that included that in the video because i just felt that it would add to the length of it but if you want to get advice on pressing techniques pressing is absolutely crucial on any sewing project you must press everything before you cross it is the mantra and do have a look at the youtube video on our channel specifically for pressing but what i like to do is just start by lining the underarm seam up and just inserting a pin at a right angle so that i know that that will match up nicely when i say that together and then the rest of the seam i just pin in the usual way so i'll make sure any notches and the raw edges are lining up nicely and then pin everything in place when you go to sew just make sure that i've pressed the seam allowance towards the sleeve on the seams so just make sure that that is in the right position as you sew um but yeah i'm just going to pin like so and then i'm just going to carry on all the way down the side seam of the dress to the hem and then i'll do the same on the other side as well so now we're going to sew the side seam and the under underarm seam that i've just pinned and showed you we're going to sew that together on the over locker so i'm just going to line it up with the 5 8 marking which is the r on my machine i always like to just get the first little bit of fabric under the foot so it's secured and then away we go just find my footprints on then we can start stitching [Applause] now when you come down to where the sleeve seam is just remember to make sure that any long threads that you've got are out of the way and that the seams are pointing in the right direction [Music] and you might find here that your machine struggles a little bit to get over this seam so you might want to just lift your foot up and sometimes you almost have to give it a bit of a bit of a push or a pull to get it through you might need to just adjust and fiddle a bit to get that through there making sure that the seams are pointing in the right direction [Music] [Music] you can see there we've got that seam sewn continuously all the way under the arm the sleeve seams are pointing in the right direction and then i'm just going to repeat that on the other side [Music] okay so things are really starting to take shape now we're almost done how exciting it just really doesn't take long to whip one of these up once you confident and you know how so we've got the side seams sewn here you know everything's really coming together it's starting to look like a proper garment all that's left to do now is to hem the sleeves and also hem the bottom of the skirt now i don't usually very often i don't use anything to stabilize the hems on my knit garments but this is quite a sort of fluid jersey so if you've got something like this and you do want to add a bit of stability i just thought i'd show you the options so i would go for again the seam tape which is this stuff that i showed you um at the beginning of the video i ironed this round the neckline and i'd just iron that onto the hem and that will just sit within the seam allowance because it's going to be a 5 8 hem so that will just press up like so and it will just stop it being wavy or stretching out of shape in the wash and i can do the same with the sleeve hems as well the other alternative is you could cut some strips of the stretch interfacing which i showed you and remember all of these products will be linked at the bottom in the description i'll put links to everything below so you can find them nice and easily but i'm just going to go ahead now and just iron on some of this fusible tape seam tape onto my hem and then i'll press the hem up i've obviously pressed the side seams towards the back of the garment as i said i'm pressing all the seams as i go i'm just not showing you all of them but i'll just show you how i'm going to work with this now you would want to slide it ideally just slide it on the end of your ironing board so that you're not going to end up fusing it to anything that you shouldn't um but i'll just show you here you just sort of lightly press the iron on and hold it down and it will just secure that tape in place and i'll just work my way all around the hem and then once that's done i'll press it up okay so i've added that tape all the way around the hem now so it's just time to press the hem up and i can use that that's half an inch wide so i can just use that as a guide i'm just going to snip this overlocking thread off here because that's going to get enclosed in a seam so i can use that as the guide to just press the hem up then half an inch is fine for a dress like this [Applause] excuse the iron it's a steam generator that's why it's so noisy i'll talk about that on the pressing video if you want any more information about noisy steam generator irons and why they're so good apart from the noise that is i'll just press this all the way around and then we're going to take it to the overlocker and i'm going to cover stitch the hem in place [Applause] i'm also going to repeat that on the sleeve seams as well the sleeve hems i'll just do exactly the same process on there and then yeah i'll take it over to the cover stitch to show you there just a little tip here as well where you're doing a hem you end up where there's a crossed seam like that you end up where it can be a little bit bulky here and a bit of a struggle sometimes to get over with your cover stitch machine or your twin needle if you're sewing it on a sewing machine a little tip there just to take a pair of scissors and just snip into the seam obviously don't go all the way through the seam be careful not to cut through the um furthest most needle stitch but then you can push the seam allowances in different directions so that when you come to sew over that it's not as bulky and it's a lot easier to get over okay so now we're going to hem the dress so i've switched my baby like desire 3 cover lock machine from an overlocker to a cover stitch i'll just bring the needles forward and re-thread for a cover stitch i'll do a separate video on how to do that for anyone who's interested but a cover stitch machine is a great way to hem jersey and knit fabrics if you can afford it if you can't you can do a twin needle on most sewing machines so it's not the end of the world but a cover stitch will get you really good results with the thread tension and the balance of the stitches and it can be quite difficult to get those results on a sewing machine so i'm just going to i've pinned the hem in place you saw me apply the tape to the raw um the raw edge and then i've pressed that up and then we're just going to start at one of the side seams bring the threads over the top of the fabric and just feed the fabric underneath the foot i'm just going to remove that pin and just feed the fabric under the foot i'm lining the edge of the foot up with the edge of the fabric the pressed edge of the fabric i've got my thread set up there and on this machine you just turn the hand wheel to say the first few stitches and secure the threads and then you cut off any excess thread and then i can just sew i'm sewing from the right side and i'm going to get a lovely line of twin a twin line of stitching on the right side and then a nice it'll look like an overlocking stitch on the wrong side and as we come to the end here i can just see my line of original line of stitches there so i'm just going to line those up with the needle guides and just stitch over a few stitches over the end just to secure everything [Applause] [Music] and then i'm just going to pull off the foot like so and you can see there we've got a nice neat cover stitch it's difficult to see you can't see it on the fabric unfortunately because it's a black thread and a black fabric but you can see that lovely neat cover stitch overlock type finish on the back as well and then i'm just going to repeat that on the sleeve hems which is a little bit more tricky because obviously you're working with a much smaller area but just apply the same principles just move one side of the sleeve hem out of the way get the other side of the sleeve hem under the foot and then stitch in the same way just removing any excess thread there [Applause] [Applause] and there we have it the sleeve hems are done as well so all i need to do now is tidy up these loose threads and you do that by pulling them through to the wrong side and then just secure them with the knots just tie a knot to secure them if there's any that sometimes when you pull one of the threads that is on the wrong side it will just pull those threads from the right side through if that doesn't happen and you can't get them to go through i just use a sewing needle and i just feed them through to the wrong side myself and then just tie a knot to secure them so i hope you all enjoyed that i hope you picked up lots of useful advice and tips don't forget everything i mentioned is linked below and if you like what you see please like and subscribe and i'll look forward to seeing you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Sew Essential

Views: 32,749

Keywords: overlocker, serger, jersey, knit, fabric, dress, how to, tutorial

Id: hUC2RqZ2hEk

Length: 45min 3sec (2703 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021