Nancy Zieman Knit Dress Sew Along, Part Two

Nancy Zieman Knit Dress Sew Along, Part Two

Part two of the Nancy Zieman Knit Dress Sew Along focuses on the basic construction of the dress. Part three, next week, will focus on finishing techniques. If you missed the Sew Along Kick-Off or Part One: Cutting the Dress, you can review them here. You can always stitch ahead.

Let’s get started. At this point we have all the dress pattern pieces and interfacing pieces cut, with darts marked. It should be a quick evening’s work to create the basic construction seamlines in the dress.

Prepare Darts

• Fold the dart by pinching the dart point and matching each dart leg on the cut edge of the garment.
• Pin the fold.
• Mark a straight stitching guide by pressing a small piece of freezer paper to the wrong-side of the dress, connecting the clips at each dart leg and the marked apex point of the dart.
• Press the freezer paper, shiny side down.

• Stitch the dart leg, using the straight edge as a guide.
• Stitch from the cut garment edge into the dart apex.

Build Dress

• Pin the yoke to the dress top, matching right sides.

• Use an overlock stitch on a serger or a wobble stitch on a sewing machine to join the yoke to the dress body with a 5/8″ seam allowance, matching right sides.

Note from Nancy: A wobble stitch allows the seam to slightly stretch, yet appear as a straight-stitched seam on the right side. What’s a wobble stitch? My quilting friend, Betty Cotton, taught me this term and how to create a wobble stitch by setting a zigzag stitch to the 0.5 width and a 2.5–3.0 length. That slight zigzag is comparable to having 5% spandex in a knit fabric!

• Press the seam allowance up towards the neckline.
• Topstitch the dress yoke seam.
• Reinforce the shoulder seam on the yoke front and back by applying a fusible interfacing strip cut from the scraps of tricot interfacing.
• Apply reinforcing interfacing to the fabric wrong sides.

• Serge or wobble stitch the right shoulder seam using a 5/8″ seam allowance.

Prepare Facings

• Match the asymmetrical shapes of the fusible interfacing to the facings.
• Follow the manufacturer’s directions to fuse the interfacing to the wrong side of each facing.

• Serge or wobble stitch to join the right shoulder seam using a 5/8″ seam allowance, right sides together.
• Serge or zigzag stitch along the facing’s lower edge for a more professionally finished look.

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Don’t forget to pin a picture from this blog post and tell all your sewing friends.

The more people who sew along with this project, the more fun it will be. I look forward to sewing along with you!

Watch Sew Knits with Confidence on Sewing With Nancy online.

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See the entire Nancy Zieman Knit Dress Sew Along schedule online here.

Bye for now,

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Nancy Zieman—author, pattern designer, businesswoman, producer, and national sewing authority—is the host of the popular show Sewing With Nancy®, which appears exclusively on public television stations across the United States and Canada. Follow Nancy’s blog at NancyZieman.com/blog and sign up to receive Nancy’s E-News for the latest news in sewing, quilting, and creating.