June Challengers, there is one more day to go! Do you need some motivation and a quick dress fix?
I have lately been inspired by a couple of youtube simple dress making tutorials. The dresses require no pattern and only basic sewing skills and can easily be made up in an evening. In many of these tutorials the fabric required is very little and often it's some sort of jersey. So, if you need a quick dress fix and have some jersey lying about you could give one of these dresses a try. I have already completed my four June Challenge dresses, but there is always July....and more sewing!
This video is by RebbSew. She has a lot of sewing videos on youtube. She shows you step-by-step how to make very simple dresses and tops with a hand-held camera and absolutely no talking. But her videos are so clear that no explanation is necessary. My favourite one is this little stripey dress tutorial:
I also discovered GiannyL's video stream. She also has no-talk sewing videos but she poses in her dresses. Her videos are really cute but some of her dresses are a little too much on the sexy side for my taste. I'm more of a flat granny shoes, vintage cardigan and below-the-knee dresses type and think showing off my bare shoulders is already pretty daring. But this dress is really cute:
And then there is ThreadBanger's video stream with lots and lots of different dress tutorial videos. My favourite is this shirred dress tutorial although I'd probably only wear this sort of dress on the beach:
What I find so refreshing about these videos, especially the two ladies who sew up their own simple dresses, is that the apporach to sewing is so much more casual than my own. A sort of cut-and-go style with lots of experimenting. Whenever I sew I'm much more careful about taking measurments, thinking about what patterns and what size to use, making muslins, cutting properly or even truing seams. Their style is pure DIY: a sewing machine, some fabric, pins and go! I have made very few projects that I have appraoched this way.
What about you? How do you sew? Do you often sew patternless? Do you just take a piece of fabric and see where it takes you? I think I want to try making more projects with a more freestyle approach. Anyways, I hope the videos have given you some inspiration should you still want to make a last-minute June Challenge dress. Cut, Sew, Go!
Great videos!
ReplyDeleteI used to sew the DIY route for years (by hand) and even sewed my wedding dress without a pattern. I just started mashine sewing about a year ago and made my first dress from a pattern about two month ago. I think both routes offer a lot of possibilitys and lot to learn and I hope to become able to combine them as needed.
I guess you could easily alter the length of the sommerdress and wear it with a bolero for a more modest look.
the freestyle approach can be very fun! frustrating here and there but all's well that ends well!
ReplyDeleteI might have been able to freestyle things when I was younger, but now that I am older, I really need to make sure everything fits me correctly. Otherwise, I just look silly.
ReplyDeleteI love the shirred dress look, and have been thinking about how to size it. I figured, like in the video, to buy a piece large enough for my bust, and once shirred, it'd still stretch out to that width. THen my mom gave me a piece of pre-shirred fabric she bought probably 30 years ago. The tag said it'd fit up to a 36" bust, but the fabric was 54" wide. Indeed, I tried to get it around me and it wouldn't stretch nearly enough! I wonder how she managed in the video to get it to fit?
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