Do you see what I mean where I'm like, I'm worried it's too poofy.
Is that a concern? Oh, we'll find out.
Hello, Welcome back to my channel, my name is Wendy and this is Can she DIY it?
It's a series where I just try to make stuff. I show you how I do it and then hopefully you can make it too.
I have been hotly pursued by one dress all year. I feel like you already know what it is.
(Honk) The strawberry dress! There was some original plan where I thought, I would have to do all the strawberries myself.
But today, Etsy has really
come to the rescue. Not sponsored, but i do like Etsy.
(Crinkle sound)
My package arrived today.
Let's open it up.
It's time to make the strawberry dress.
This dress is pure fantasy.
It's not very practical, but i'm gonna try to make it a bit more practical.
By making this a two piece. So you can wear the top and the skirt separately,
But when you wear it together, it hopefully will look just like the Lirika Matoshi creation.
Here are the materials you'll need:
On top of the strawberry fabric,
I got a pink knit to use as a lining,
Pink tulle, to add fluffiness, obviously, and a 12 inch invisible zipper.
Let's go!
If you're kind of nervous like me, let's start with the skirt. Brace yourself for...
a lot of gathering. I do have a gathering foot on my machine and I think today is the right day to use it.
Here's a little gathering foot. If you don't have one i'll put a link in the description.
But, the way it works is you put your machine on the highest
tension possible, as well as, the longest possible stitch length,
and i'm going to test what shrinkage that gets us.
So, I actually had my math wrong at this point. I was testing for 50% shrinkage, but I really should have been testing for 25%.
And, ultimately, if you don't want to deal with all of this, just use the two parallel stitches gathering method. Which
has a bit more control, but is much slower with our gathering calibration done.
We wanted to cut out two layers of tulle that were 3 meters wide and the height of my midi skirt length.
We did make the mistake of cutting our first piece
1.5 meters wide so I ended up doing some sewing to join two halves into one same goes for the strawberry
But instead of two layers just one outer layer still 300 meters wide and my midi skirt length spoiler alert
We did add more layers later on but this plan was built purely off of observing the original dress. It's just
Fabric opacity is not always the same. It's time to bake
This layered cake of tulle and strawberries on top
And by bake, I just mean gather them together along the top edge
Forever and ever until you're done all 300cm***
Then julia helped to gather up the tulle ruffles for the bottom of the skirt. This was a gigantic strip
It was 20 centimeters tall. I
Really? I don't even know how long it was in the end when joining the ruffles to the skirt
Only sew it to the top strawberry layer. So I have it all separated out here
You just want to line up the bottom of the skirt with the ruffled edge
Straight stitch all the way around and then gravity will let it flop down to make the lining
We used a circle skirt calculator that I have linked in the description
And to add a touch of utility and innovation to the skirt, you can add a hidden pocket
All you need to do is slice open the lining and sew the pocket near the top along one of the straight edges
Losing motivation
Okay, this always happens where I try so hard to cram in one last project before summer ends and I can literally feel
the temperatures dropping outside and my motivation is also
Like why?
at one point there was a plan where it was like strawberry tulle tulle lining was the layers but we found that
It didn't quite have the opacity that we wanted and I don't want this lining to show at all
So we've ended up doing whoa
strawberry tulle tulle tulle
Strawberry, it's almost now two times thicker and then now i'm all concerned. Like what if it's too puffy
That kind of put the brakes on the project
But we have no choice but to continue and find out the other thing added to it
We cut out a long rectangle of tulle and just added that as the skinny little waistband
You can see it's like a piece of tulle that was folded over four times
There was a point where it was folded over two more times. So it's way thicker and I have my lining
We're gonna attach that now
I have a bit of excess fabric. So i'm going to stick to putting the zipper on the side with the pocket first
Do you see what I mean where i'm like i'm worried it's too poofy?
So I started sewing the zipper up here all the way down to here. Then I realized I need to
Get the fabric
Right sides together with this side of the pocket and then sew the zipper to this side of the pocket
And then it all joins back together at the bottom at first. I basically closed off the pocket
That was the mistake I made the left side of the zipper is done time to sew the right side
I just need to cut off this bit of excess and then close the rest of the side that is underneath
It hurts me to admit this but the skirt was definitely the easy part to the top
There's a really good tutorial. Actually, if you would prefer to just make this whole thing a dress
That's why i'm not doing it because it's just a repeat of an already existing great tutorial. It's by madison
I'll put the link in the description for you looking back at the inspo
So I want to capture this essence, but make it a functional wearable standalone top
The original has a zipper going all the way down the back that is where the escape hatch is
But i'm kind of interested in seeing if I can skip the zipper entirely and make it open
In the front using the ties as the closure. I'm also curious to make the sleeves a little bit longer
Let's get started. For the bodice, I cut out these two pieces which are going to cover my back the front one
Looks like this
You can use a shirt of yours as a guide. But if you just cut it to this general shape, you'll be pretty close because
I've cut them quite generously and i'm going to sew them together and take away the fabric that I don't need
Okay closes in the front
The back could maybe drop like another two centimeters
I feel like this is pretty close. I thought i'd be cutting away tons of excess fabric, but
I did find some adjustments. Alright, so the back I want to
sew in about this much
So that it's fitting with my back
But the side seams go straight down and that means roughly got to get rid of the same amount in the front
This is what i'm aiming for. Hopefully it all works according to plan. But yeah shoulder seams should be lined up
Side seams should be lined up
i've trimmed the
Excess fabric from the back and i've dropped it so that it's just above my bra strap
The original dress has a gathered front on top
So to accomplish that I used the lining as a guide to cut out the tool
But added this extra amount that extends further into the middle front
Same goes with the strawberry layer adding this extra amount along the straight edge
That is the front opening all of this extra is going to be what gathers up you might have noticed that the tulle
One was not as wide as the strawberry one
We weren't totally sure how much to add but we ended up sticking with the strawberry distance. So
I did have to cut it out of the tulle again
don't be like us
On the back, uh, sorry i'm talking to the camera actually
Yeah
On the back using the lining as guide same size
We cut out one layer of tulle two layers of strawberries since one looked a little bit sparse the front
However, completely different story. We're trying to get gathers to be in the front area, but leave the side flatter
I'll show you how this was done to help hold the outer edge in place
We just add a basting stitch all the way
Around so that the layers don't shift on you
First I sew the layers together along the side with the armhole. Then I sew the layers together along this curved line
You see here
That's going to be a barrier to control where the gathering happens
after that
I gathered only the tulle and strawberry layers together along the top shoulder and then that can be secured to the shoulder with a
straight stitch flipping the excess fabric aside
the straight edges should all be sewn together and this should be done for both the left and right pieces of the
Front we have two backs
We have two fronts so we can put it all together
Everything is going to get sewn right sides together in the back middle and the two sides
The next step is
Sleeves so there's been a lot of visual detective work in this project. Just me like
zoom in enhance i'm starting to feel like the original design just has
A nicer opacity than the fabric that I was able to buy i'm going with two layers of the exact same
cut of fabric
And i've already added the two
Long parallel stitches along the top. So i'm just going to gather those up and then sew the sleeve closed into the tube shape
Sleeves are on they're just starting right sides together. I do think I need to put darts into the lining
So i'm trying to figure out the right amount like the ideal is that at the front bottom?
They just meet and right now as you can see
Some excess here are the darts that I added to the lower front. I needed to get rid of nine centimeters on both sides
which meant folding and then sewing these little triangles that are four and a half centimeters wide at the bottom since
4.5 times two is nine and then taper off just below the bust
Last night I finished all of the ruffles
With the sleeves I cut these 24 centimeter
long elastic bands attached little tulle ruffle trim to it and then attached that whole thing to the sleeve which helped to
Gather it all up
And the ruffles were also attached to the entire neckline you sew it right sides together and then sew the raw fabric
Down so that it doesn't flip the flipping thing was definitely a problem between the sleeves and the neckline and on both of those
I added these two little stitches that would help lock the whole thing in place in the front
We had that like big balloon of excess fabric
I put gathering stitches into the bottom and brought it so that it all
Pinched in at the front bottom with one little straight stitch on the left and the right of the shirt
I flipped the raw fabric at the bottom inwards put it down with a straight stitch. So
We can finish today. I feel like i've been saying that for the last like week and a half
The big finish today is these ties julia helped make these and it's really a
Wider piece of tulle folded over many times and then sewn into a tube which also does need to be flipped inside out
which gives you this like fun little stretchy tube one piece of tulle needs to be coming out of the
Bottom front right and then one piece of tulle needs to be coming out of the bottom front left
Those are going to get tied together to form a cute little bow in the front the bottom tie worked out
Okay, i'm going to sew that last tie
on and now you will finally get to see the big reveal of my
two-piece version of the lirika matoshi
strawberry dress of the summer
There's a few little hacks that I added to this to help make it look more like the original dress
You might notice that the top and the bottom don't really have much
Separation which helps it look like one complete piece with the little design deviation of this peekaboo back
basically, I added these little hook and eye closures and then in the front I added this little
loop to the skirt
Which these ties go through all of that just kind of like hitches the skirt to the top
So that it looks like a complete dress or you can wear it like with a little midriff
Up to you there will be plenty more photos of this on instagram at with withwendy
And as always if you make any of my tutorials, don't forget to use hashtag madewithwendy so I can find it and love it
Thank you to everyone who dm-ed me and encouraged me haunted me to make this. I literally had it on my to-do
Since february and then I kept putting it off because I was like, this is too
Crazy, I still stand by that when I went outside to take photos. I stuck out a lot
The next video on this channel is going to be a whole bunch of different ideas to make stylish functional CDC appropriate
face masks because you know
I love utility. So if you subscribe hit the bell notification
You can be back here for the masks. Summer, you will be missed
Thank you guys so much for watching. I'll see you in the next video
Bye bye