BWOF 5-05 #133 Facings

For those family and friends who read this blog just to see what I'm up to, feel free to stop now. I'm going to try to demonstrate a sewing technique.

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Drafting the facing:

After altering a pattern's body pieces it can be a real pain to then have to remember all the alterations you did to change the facing. So here is my quick and dirty trick.

Note: I only do this when I have enough fabric to cut out another facing if this doesn't work :)


Note 2: If you click on the picture, blogger will open it up a little bigger.

These are the back pieces for the dress. The black lines are the important seam lines for the center back piece, the green lines are the important seam lines for the site back piece. I lay the pieces down so that the princess seam lines at the armscye are touching. This means that they pieces overlap by 1 and 1/4" because you must take the seam allowances out of the equation.

Don't worry about the big old gap caused at the bottom, we don't care for the facings. Instead, just lay another piece of tracing paper and trace around the edges and then cut roughly around the blue line. Voila! A back facing that takes into account any busy/shoulder/width adjustments you made.

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Sewing the shoulders.

Burda's directions are plenty accurate, but they aren't intuitive, so I'm trying to share some pics.

I think the directions are clear about putting the facing on, and sewing up to about 1.5" away from the cut edge. Then it all goes crazy.

The first important thing is to turn facings to the inside at this point (ask me how I know). Then sew the shoulder seams for the body. It's important to fold the facing bits down. I pinned them to keep them out of the way, as below. It's also important to sew the right front shoulder to the right back shoulder. Your dress will look very odd if you try to sew the right front shoulder to the left front shoulder (ask me how I know).

Then, with some finagling, sew the shoulder seams of the facings. This will take some work, but you should end up with something that looks like this:
This is me coming from under the facing and poking my hand out where there are still holes.

I tried to take pictures of the next bit, but the fabric is very busy and it just looks like a wad. So, first thing to remember is that it's o'kay if it looks like a wad.

To get an idea for what you do:
Sew one side of the straps at a time.
In the picture above, as I am pulling by thumb out of the gap, I would pinch the facing and body pieces at that opening and pull them with me. Then sew the gap opening closed. Here is what it looks like after you've pulled the gap. The red line is the approximate sewing line.

After you sew that line, sew the other side of the strap by following the same procedure.

It's hard to visualize, but easy once you do it. The nice thing is that there is no need for hand sewing!