South County Girl: Experiments in Sewing

Friday, August 10, 2012

Experiments in Sewing

My dress fabric at $1 a yard!

I've been experimenting in the land of sewing and messed up on my dress in a big way and needed to do some fixing...

I apparently didn't read the directions on the pattern box correctly and needed to purchase more fabric to salvage my dress attempt. I forgot to wash it before I cut it and I accidentally laid it right sides facing up on both layers so the original cuts were half right and half wrong (and not pre-shrunk)... Thankfully the fabric I picked out was $1 a yard on clearance at Walmart ($6 initial cost) and they had one other roll on the rack still, so I was able to pick up enough fabric to re-do the whole dress for $7.25...

I also figured out from attempting to assemble the not pre-shrunk fabric that there are things out there called interfacing and lining too...

So, I bought 2 packages of interfacing for $2.17 each ($4.34)... and got home and realized they were going to be 2 small for my project so I had to buy even more last night at Walmart. I was able to find it sold by the yard and picked up 3 yards just to be sure for $8.91 ($2.97 a yard) and I think I will have enough for more than one dress if I survive the first one.

I also found a nice white fabric on clearance for $2 a yard that I can use for lineing and bought 2 yards of that because it was 90 inches wide and should be helpful for the rest on my sewing attempts. Total, $4.00.

At present my dress is now preshrunk & cut again! I even transferred the pattern lines onto the fabric and I took the time to preshrink the lining and the interface (you soak it in hot water for 15 mins and then let air dry!) and i've actually started to sew it together.

At times the pattern kicks my butt and if it weren't for you tube and google, I would have given up long ago, but video tutorials are amazing!

Total Cost to make my dress so far: