1946 dress-- french seaming and embroidery steps.

Okay, the next step in the process is sewing the dress panels together.  I know it sounds funny, but the embroidery on this dress is over a seam, and if we're sewing the front panels together, we might as well do the back, too.  When you're sewing a seam, you usually sew with the right sides of the fabric together.  But I'm a firm believer in french seaming.  I don't have a serger (commercial pieces are finished with one) so I do french seams.  With french seams, you put the wrong sides together, sew a scant 1/4 inch seam--

In this picture, my machine is set to the right needle position, which give me an exact 1/4 inch seam from the side of the foot. After all the initial seams are sewn, I fold the right sides together, encasing the other seam's raw edge, and sew it again.  It makes the inside nice and neat and keep the garment from falling apart when it's washed.  (My sister claims I'm crazy for doing french seams on baby and toddler clothes, but I say that if I'm going to all the time and effort and expense of making something, it's gotta last!)  After the dress panels are sewn together, it's time to transfer the embroidery designs.

I've tried all of the transfer methods currently on the market.  It's hard to get a line dark enough to follow with the heat transfer pencils.  Transfer sheets are better for transferring pattern markings that have to be washed out.  My favorite method is the Sulky iron-on transfer pen.  Micheals sells it, and it's available online.  All you need is a pencil, the transfer pen, and some tracing paper.  Don't buy the stuff from the fabric store; it's a rip off!  Buy it in the school supplies section of your local discount store.  There's more of it, it costs less, and one pad will last a long time.  Trace off the transfers, go over them in the pen, and then cut them apart.

Next, hand baste them where you want them to be.  Make sure that the transfer ink side is against the fabric, or you'll end up with the pattern on your iron.  Then, follow the instructions on the pen package.  Because we already have the iron out (I'm lazy, you see) now would be the best time to fuse the interfacing to the fabric.  I purposely cut two interfacing pieces for the collar to give it a nice shape, and I always interface button plackets.  I get much less in the way of puckering with the buttonholes, and ti gives a bit of support to the buttons.

For the embroidery, we're doing a lazy daisy, an outline stitch, and a french knot over and over again.  In this dress, there are 20 flowers made from french knots and lazy daisies.  Four of the flowers are on the ends of the sash (because I said so!) two on the collar, and fourteen on the front of the dress.  These are all easier to do if you use a hoop, though it's not completely necessary.  The only oddity with this pattern is that there are lines in the centers of the lazy daisy petals.  Sometimes I kinda forgot about them and had to go back and put them in.  I think it's there to make it look like real petals. 

Next post--construction.