Hello! Welcome to a new episode of Make Thrift Buy. This is the show where you send in clothes
or accessories you’ve found on the internet, and then I do my best to recreate them.
Todays challenge was sent in by danielle romero. And as soon as I saw this dress, I knew that
I had to recreate it, because I find high-neck tops and swing dresses really flattering for
my body shape, and I'm also going this kind of stretchy fabric renaissance right now,
where all I want to do is work with stretchy fabrics, so this was perfect.
The original dress is from urban outfitters – and oh boy do I have a lot of problems
with urban outfitters. I could also find absolutely nothing about how the dress was made.
So I really had absolutely no qualms in trying recreating this dress for myself.
So, let's begin!
To make this dress, I’m basically going to modify an existing pattern, because that’s
way easier than making an entire new pattern from scratch!
Because the dress is really similar to the DIY high-neck crop top that I made a few weeks
ago, I am simply going to modify the pattern that I used in that video.
First, I made an exact duplicate of this crop top pattern, using recycled newspaper as my
pattern paper. Then, I widened the neck and the armholes,
because this dress has a slightly larger neckline and bigger armholes than the crop top.
Then, I ruled a line straight across at the underarm, or the bust line, and cut off everything
below it.
This is going to make up very top of my new pattern.
I put this pattern piece at the top of a bunch of newspaper that I could draw a dress pattern
onto. The very next thing that I did was to measure
the length that I wanted the dress to be, from the very top of my shoulder, adding 1
inch for seam allowances. I then transferred this measurement onto my
pattern, starting at the shoulder point, and going straight down, making a mark where the
measurement ends.
I then cut the newspaper straight across from this mark.
The next thing you need to do is to add or subtract newspaper from this part of the pattern
until its width measures approximately 23 inches.
Then, I drew a straight line from the armhole point on the old pattern, down to this corner.
And there's my swing dress pattern! Well – almost.
I tried this pattern out first on a white floral jersey, but I ended up with a different
hemline than what I was going for. I did realize this halfway through making the dress, but
I decided that I liked the accident and I finished it off like this anyway! Accidents
can sometimes turn out awesome!
But, I also still wanted to try and recreate the actual dress itself.
And to do this, I needed to make one more modification to the pattern.
First I measured how long the dress was, from the bustline to the bottom down this edge,
because this is the shortest point of the dress and I want to make the rest of the dress
this length. I measured this to be 24.5 inches. So I then made marks like this, 24.5 inches
from the bust line, right along the bottom of the skirt.
And this will, hopefully, now be the final dress pattern!
To make this dress, I used black ribbed jersey. I find that ribbed jerseys can often be annoying
to hem, especially this particularly crappy jersey that I got from Spotlight, so if you’re
able to get your hands on it, I would recommend using a lightweight jersey-knit that isn’t ribbed.
I recently also learned a trick for cutting out patterns where you place paper underneath
your fabric, and put your pattern on top, pin, and cut through both the fabric and the
pattern underneath at the same time. Make sure you’re placing your pattern on the
fabric’s fold. The paper underneath stabilizes the fabric
while you cut it, ensuring that you cut out exactly the same shape as your pattern!
Once I used the pattern to cut out the fabric, and unfolded it, it looked like this. Then,
I simply repeated this, to get two identical pieces.
So, now I have two of these pieces. One makes up the front, and the other is the back. I
place them right-sides together, and then I sew them together at the shoulders and the
sides. I also make sure to add pins before sewing.
To sew them together, I’m using a zig zag stitch.
Then, to hem the bottom of the dress, while the shoulder and the side seams are still
on the outside, I fold the fabric at the bottom of the dress up half an inch and sew over the top.
As I mentioned before, I was having a bit of difficultly with hemming this ribbed fabric
even though I was using a walking foot attachment, which generally feeds the fabric through evenly.
So, I used my other trick – and this is the same trick that you can use on knit fabrics
if you don’t own a walking foot! While I was sewing, I placed tissue paper underneath
the hem, and I sewed through both the fabric and paper. Then after sewing, I simply tore
the tissue paper off – and then also spent about 5 to 10 minutes picking out little pieces
of tissue paper from the stitches!
But, it worked, and it gave me a fairly flat hem.
The next step is to add neck and armhole cuffs, and I do this in exactly the same way as I
did in my DIY crop top video, except that I used a slightly thinner neck cuff. If you
do want a more detailed explanation of the following process, then you should go and
watch that video! But, I’ll also explain it really quickly here for good luck.
I measure the circumference of the neck hole, which is 11 inches, take half an inch off
this measurement, and cut out a rectangle which is 10 and a half by 2 and a half inches.
Then, I fold this in half, sew down here, turn it the right way around, fold it in half
lengthways, quarter it with pins,
quarter the neckhole with pins,
and I sew them together
with the cuff on the front of the right side of the dress piece, with the raw edges matching.
I use a zig zag stitch, and I match up each set pins by stretching the fabrics so that
each set of pins is aligned.
And then I do the exact same for each of the armholes.
So, with that step completed I have some pretty neck and armhole cuffs, and it also means
that the dress is done.
And now the question is – how did I go?
[funky EDM music plays]
So that was it! And my conclusion is 100%: [scissor snipping sound effect]
All this dress really is is an extension of my high neck crop top tutorial. And if you
do work it out, you'll probably also get addicted to making them like I did and make a whole
bunch - because once you've got your pattern going they only take about an hour to make!
Anyway, if you do try this, or any of my other projects out, don't forget to tag it with
#diyannika if you upload your photo to instagram. Don't forget to keep leaving suggestions for
new challenges for me to try, and I'll see you all for my next video. Bye!