Racerback Summer Dress Part 1 - Seam Allowances

We're deconstructing the racerback summer dress today!

Today you get the pattern and a lesson on seam allowances. 

There are only two pattern pieces for this dress: the front bodice yoke and the back bodice yoke. Everything else is rectangles.

You all know that I haven't dabbled much in commercial patterns, but the little that I have heard about them has led me to believe that there are two main categories:

1. those with seam allowances included
2. those without

and the sewing world is divided into folks who like one or the other, or who used to like one and then started liking the other. I've never drawn seam allowances into my patterns because that was just how I was taught. I simply add them around the paper pattern when I am cutting the fabric out. 

Then people started to ask me questions like "How much seam allowance do you use?" and "Why do some patterns have wider seam allowances than others?" and "Why is there seam allowance at some parts of the pattern and none at others?"

So I thought I'd do something different with this tutorial, and discuss seam allowance. There is a reasoning behind them that, once understood, will enable you to make your own patterns and freely adapt pre-existing ones.

Let's begin. First is the picture again of the pattern pieces:

They have no seam allowances. In other words, they are the exact dimensions of the finished garment bodice. Remember this, because we will add seam allowances to some sides/edges, and explain what they're there for. Throughout this tutorial, at every side/edge of the pattern pieces, ask yourself this important question:

What is this edge/side for? 

The answer to this might be any of the following:

• It joins to another edge.
• It is a fold.
• It is a stand-alone edge.
• It needs to be finished (e.g. bound, serged etc).

The answer will tell you whether to add seam allowance to it and, if so, how wide. Typical seam allowances are 1/4"-3/8" or 1 cm, but there will always be variations, depending on what that edge is used for,

Next is the obligatory shot of all the fabric pieces. Note that I didn't include thread and elastic and other such stuff. Pay attention: there is a whole bunch of rectangles, and then there are those two bodice-y looking pieces right at the top. We're going to concentrate on those two.

Observe the two aforementioned bodice-y looking pieces. They will be shown together in most of the pictures, because there is a symmetry to their seam allowance allocation that is useful to study.

CENTER

The left piece is the FRONT (F). The paper pattern is half of the entire front bodice, so the fabric is folded along the center front. The right piece is the BACK (B). The paper pattern is again half of the entire back bodice, so the fabric is again folded along the center back.

Q And this is worth mentioning because?

A There is no seam allowance along fold lines. That is obvious once you can visualize the significance of the center front and center back, but it's always good to revise the basics, yes?

BOTTOM

Now look at the bottom edges of these pattern pieces - these will connect to the skirt. Therefore you need a seam allowance for sewing that edge to the skirt. This skirt is a gathered skirt, and it is easier to work with gathers if the seam allowance is wider than usual. I used 1/2". 

Incidentally, you will use this same seam allowance (1/2") for the top edge of the skirt, which gets sewn to those bottom edges. The principle is:
Edges which get sewn together have the same seam allowance.


SIDES

Next are the sides of the bodice. The pieces are now lined up in the orientation in which they will be sewn together. The sides need to be joined in a side seam, so they will need the (typical) seam allowance for the sewing - 1 cm or 1/4"-3/8".

Using the principle we just introduced, the side seam (front) and the side seam (back) will have the same seam allowance because they get sewn together.

ACCESS/OPENINGS
This dress will have bound necklines and armscyes. This means they there are no sleeves or collar and the necklines and armscyes are the final, finished edges of the bodice. They will not be sewn to another edge - no collar, no sleeve, no facings. They will simply be bound with the equivalent of bias tape. Therefore they don't need a seam allowance. 

SHOULDER

Now we will introduce the shoulder strap. Behold these are the bodice fabric pieces unfolded to full size, with the paper patterns laid on them, and the skinny shoulder strap rectangle above them. 

Let's start with the front bodice. It has two shoulder edges that will be joined to each end of the shoulder strap. Therefore each shoulder edge needs a seam allowance. It will be enclosed within a double fold of the strap (it will become clear later), sort of like the first stage of a French seam. So we'll make it narrow - about 1/4 - 3/8".

Now for the back bodice. This is a racerback dress, so the back piece has its shoulder edge right in the middle of the back. It will not be sewn to the strap but it will have a casing through which the strap will slide. Therefore we need a seam allowance wide enough to make that casing. We added 1" (width of casing) + 1/4" hem = 1.25" seam allowance.

I want to point out just one more thing before we move on to the actual sewing. In the last two photos, you might have noticed that the bottom edge seam allowance (where it connects to the skirt) is not uniform. It is slightly wider at the center fold and narrower at the side seam. This is a child's pattern, and children have bellies that stick out and raise skirt hemlines. To counter this, children's patterns are usually drafted with a dip in the center front so that the final hemline of a skirt, or the waistline/yokeline of a dress will look horizontal on their round bellies. You can read about it in excruciating detail and consequence here (see Step 21).

If you are using a child paper pattern with a perfectly horizontal hem, like this brown paper pattern, you should allocate to this hem, a wider (e.g. 3/4") seam allowance in the center region and a narrower seam allowance (e.g. 1/2") towards the side seams. 

If you are lucky enough to be using a child paper pattern that already has this adjustment, you can just use a perfectly uniform seam allowance (e.g. 1/2") along the hem. I've already integrated this into the patterns you'll be printing out to sew this sundress. 

Click on the pattern to download and print:

It is in three sizes: 7 year old, 5 year old and 3+ year old. They are not graded patterns - they were drafted to fit my children. Again, in case it wasn't obvious by now (hee!), there are no seam allowances. 


Coming up: Part 2: Binding with Knit.

Racerback Summer Dress

Well!

Finally some productivity around here!

This is one of my favorite summer dresses because it's easy, fast, doesn't involve shirring and the straps stay up. What's that bit about shirring again, you ask? Considering that I've actually posted tutorials on shirred sundresses, mass-produced doll clothes with it and prettied it up to impersonate smocking, I'm really not one of its stronger proponents. I think it's magical in action, but it's very inexact, with no consistent relation between pre-shirred and post-shirred fabric width, making it very difficult to estimate yardage. Also, with a non-chain-stitch home sewing machine, the stitches come apart over time, especially with repeated, high-abuse wearing by small children. Which makes it actually not the best method of sundress-making for beginner sewists, if you think about it. I mean, sure, it's easy, but it isn't great. And it's certainly not robust. So while I still love it, I now reserve it for cuffs of sleeves and openings of pockets. In main bodices or midsections of garments, however, if I can possibly use elastic (or a totally different style altogether), I'll pick those over shirring any day and twice on Sunday.

Back to the racerback sundress now. 

Growing up in South East Asia meant regular trips to beach resorts on tropical islands. And every decent beach resort will have sundresses like these for sale in their gift shops. Usually made of batik or supersoft tie-dye rayon, they appear in various manifestations of the racerback style. I've always had a soft spot for cross-back-type styling (you should have seen my swimsuits in the days when I actually swam) but the traditional cross-back dresses can turn out hideous if the chest girth is inaccurate. You've seen the consequences of such unfortunate drafts - big gaping sags in the middle back, or pulling at the shoulders, or cross-straps that are wider at the top and convergent at the yoke. So people put elastic and shirring between the straps and work it somehow into the design to keep it all snug or just recut the pattern altogether.

Again, inexact, especially for beginner sewists. So I thought I'd show you this style of Y-back sundress instead. The front looks like a classic tank

but the back is oh-what-fun!

Lots of room around the armscye for comfort,

with a simple gathered skirt attached below the yoke.

Good for twirling,

great for lounging

and you can customize it for snugness, ease, room-for-growth, room-for-shrinkage -  whatever you need.

We'll be deconstructing it in the following posts!

Check back for a pattern in three sizes, the full tutorial and a bonus lesson on seam allowances!

Catching Up

Well hello again!

Mum and Dad left for home today. It all feels like I've been in a very delightful, very long dream. We had a full, rich, incredibly joyful five weeks together, during which we did SO much. Tonight, while setting the table for five (instead of seven), I had to think hard to remember where everyone usually sat, before Mum and Dad came to visit. Not a sad thought at all - it made me smile, actually, to remember the gift of their having been a part of our routines and home for such a significant period. We're understandably sad that the house is a little quieter, but it was such a fulfilling time together that we're excited to be back to our old "normals" - us in our two-generational-familyness, and they on their way to Singapore and its food, smells, sunshine, markets, ridiculous population density and labyrinth-esque public transport system. 

To ease myself back into real life again, I bought fabric online (oh, the shame). They're all knits, which translate into clothes the kids and I will actually wear, which is how I rationalize my burgeoning knit stash.

I also feel like I've been away from blogland for centuries. It was a good break, and I would like to kick back(er) and not touch my sewing machine for another, oh, six months, and just eat chocolate all day, but I have stuff to share, and projects to complete before the turn of the season. See an excerpt from my list:

• Racer back sundress
• Emily has a birthday coming up! 
• Coats to think about
• A mannequin to deconstruct
• Frog buttons to teach you
• A Chinese tunic to make
• Poor husband's shirts to alter
• Plus I still owe Bearaby a PJ top (she has the skirt).

And I need to spend some quality time with my glue gun. Oh, my sad, sidelined glue gun! Did I tell you I threw out almost all the cardboard in my stash when Mum and Dad came to visit? They needed their closet back. I was planning to harass the Costco staff again to replenish my stash when I realized I like having an empty closet. So, believe it or not, I'm going to cut down on cardboard hoarding, and I'm telling myself I still have all those flattened boxes under the guest bed and between the box spring and the mattress. So maybe losing a mere closet  - even if it was a sizable walk-in closet - worth of cardboard isn't too bad.

That's just the sewing and crafting! There are also people to meet, books to read, emails to reply to, letters to write, food to eat, miles to run, laps to swim no public swimming pools here- blast!, festivals to crash, apples to pick and mazes to get lost in, before school swings into full gear and I finally admit to myself that the summer is done.

Speaking of letters to write, I want to show you my new Weapon of Mass Communication:

It's a fountain pen. My brother bought it for me. I've always loved fountain pens and he's such a pen aficionado that he was the perfect person to pick this one out. They make you want to write nicely, fountain pens do. They also make you want to write real letters, not email, or blog posts, or thank you cards, or party invitations, or text messages or FB status updates that seem to be all I can claim to my name now. I used to write wonderful letters. Maybe with my trusty new sword, I will again. Did I ever share that writing cursive with a fountain pen was part of our third grade (primary three) curriculum at school? We all had to carry  weird blotting papers in our bags. We also always had blue fingers and strange blue spots on our pencil cases.

And finally, a project I actually completed during these five weeks:

When Jenna saw it, she said, "Oh, you made a nicer Tallulah!"

Yes, much better than the old one, who had deformed facial features, poor thing.

She's going to another home, to love a little toddler. So tomorrow we're off to the post office, then the supermarket, then the library, all before lunch. Yep, life is back to being one breathless race from sunup to sundown. If it ain't manic, it ain't summer, right?

Easel

Another woodworking project not done by me! 

Grandpa made this easel for Emily (and Jenna and Kate).

Lots of adjustable bits to accommodate the heights and preferences of everyone from Kate to Mum (yes, I get to use it, too).

When it was done, we posed it with some framed art on it (which I'd oil-pastelled years ago for the girls' room to match their rug) to take some photos.

We also actually used it, of course.

And at the end of the day, we folded it up flat and put it away.

We love that Grandpa and Grandma got to make so many useful things for us on this trip. We also suspect that Grandpa, especially, enjoyed making those multiple trips to the Home Depot because he'd missed all the woodworking he'd done when he was younger. Dad and Mum like recounting how, as parents of young kids and moving into their first home with us, they'd taken the bus to the lumberyard and then walked home bearing planks on their shoulders between them (we didn't have a car). With those, they'd built our beds and our kitchen cabinets. Now that Singapore has annoyingly gone on to develop herself into a veritable urban jungle, all the old neighborhood lumberyards are gone and nobody does home carpentry any longer. I feel like I've been given a huge privilege to have places like Lowe's and the Home Depot just around the corner. And it was eye-opening watching Dad and Mum build these things for the kids with minimal power tools, just like they did in the old days when we couldn't afford them. I wish I could ship back to Singapore some of the space and resources we have here in the US so people could work with their hands again. 

And maybe I should attempt to work with wood someday, when I get tired of sewing or cardboarding. Not just to repurpose an entertainment center into a play kitchen, I mean. But to build things from scratch, the same way I sew, just for the sheer fun of it. I mean, we can never have too many new media to play with, right?

Picnic Table

I've just massacred the summer dress I'm making for Jenna (my serger slashed holes in it) so I thought I'd give up for now and instead share a project other people made.

Grandpa and Grandma made us a picnic table!

It all began when, after replacing our old deck railings with Dave, Grandpa and Grandma decided to make something out of the old deck railing boards. No one in our family can, with a clear conscience, throw away scraps of any craft material, so plans for a repurposed picnic table soon got underway. Not far into the project, they decided that the old boards were too splintery and decrepit to be worth sanding and filing down, so everyone went wood-shopping.

There was planning, measuring, 

sawing,

drilling,

assembling,

market-testing,

filing, sanding and staining,

and enjoying.

What a beauty she is.

Grandpa designed her to be kid-sized, but with room for growth. See those double beams under the seats? When the kids get older, the top beam can be removed to lower the seats.

There she sits, dreaming of art and craft projects, storybook reading, lemonade-sipping, dolly-playing, birthday-partying, journal-writing, and family-get-togethering. And picnicking, of course.

Speaking of which, we had lunch on our new picnic table today! She bore the weight of three grownups and three fidgety little kids

who loved being able to eat outdoors and take breaks to play on the rope-swing between sandwich-bites. 

Emily said it was just like having our own park in our backyard, because we have our own picnic table.

I must remember to make her a fitted coverall out of tarps, so she'll stay warm and safe through the winter. For now though, she'll have the company of three very happy little girls who think their grandpa and grandma can make anything. Emily dragged Grandpa through the aisles of Michaels and pointed out a little wooden easel. "Can you make this for me?" 

Grandpa is half-way done. I'll share here when he is!

I've Been Wanting to Make This Summer Dress But Life Got In The Way

and that picture is of the only part that's done. 

Actually, these are this year's summer dresses for the girls. The plan was to make them two each. I've made one, just to test the draft. Kate wore it until it shrank (or she grew) to the point that it now barely covers her bottom. 

This is such an easy summer dress that I am going to do a tutorial for it here, hopefully before winter comes. So much easier and less iffy than shirred sundresses. And yes, all knit fabric. My children refuse to wear wovens, remember? See that neckline? All the edges are bound like that - with the actual fabric itself, but we can use the natural sideways stretch of the knit to hug curves without having to cut bias strips like with wovens. So easy you wouldn't believe it. 

Related: last night, while cutting out these summer dresses, I watched Night Crossing. Have you seen that movie? It's that 1980s one starring John Hurt and Beau Bridges about two families escaping from East Germany to West Germany in a hot air balloon that they made. I loved it for so many reasons:

1. The men sewed a hot air balloon. A life-saving hot air balloon, for heaven's sake!!!!!! They didn't just buy it from Target. They sewed it!!!!!!!!!
2. The men used one of their sons' Physics textbook to make the burner. 
3. The men went fabric shopping.
4. The fabric store staff were exactly the same in the 1970s as they are right now - they ask you what you are making, and then look critical when you tell them. And they are disapproving when you buy in bulk. The men lied about what they were making, incidentally. I was probably channeling them without realizing it when I wrote my guide to surviving fabric-shopping with small children. 

After the movie, I looked at my cutting board and bits of shredded fabric on the floor and became all existential and profound. Why am I sewing summer dresses? How are they life-saving? Who will make a tear-jerker Disney movie of my sewing pursuits? Why aren't I using my old Physics textbooks (for purposes other than weightlifting and flower presses, I mean)? Why have I just spent a year of my life cloning myself? What will I do when the world's supply of hazelnuts runs out and nutella becomes a black market item? Why have I no ambition to change history, one designer fat quarter at a time?  

On my nightstand

... in a manner of speaking, since this photo was obviously not taken in my bedroom.

Since I haven't been sewing or cardboarding much recently, my nights have been spent reading. And this is the collection of books that I'm simultaneously halfway through. All light reading, and four out of six are extremely funny. Three are by English authors, two are psychological nonfiction, four are about family, two are about cultural angst and one is about food. Very telling. Notice that none of them are sewing, drafting or craft books? And none of them would look good posing with something from Starbucks (or Caribou Coffee, if you're from these parts, not that I drink coffee from either, or at all). Hah. I almost wish one of them were a modern novel, so that I might appear current, hip and edgy. Alas. 

Just to have something to write about, let me tell you about these books. Let's begin at the top of the stack.

I'm reading through my collection of old Enid Blytons with Emily. Sometimes Jenna and Kate listen in. We're now on book #11 of the 15-book Mystery series about five intrepid detective children and their runs-in with the local, somewhat insipid police force. Lots of disguises, great twists and hilarious conversation.

A Tiger in the Kitchen is one of those few books that has been written about Singaporean culture (i.e. food) that has no glossy color photographs of actual food. It's a fun read, given that the author sounds like she's from the same generation as I, and as disintegrated with the Chinese parts of her identity as I, and, living in the US, as desperate to capture the essence of Singaporean cooking as I. I wish she had small children, so I could read about how exhausted she is at the end of each day, and resorting to making pancakes from a Bisquick box for dinner in spite of her best intentions to make a Singaporean meal from scratch.

I love Gerald Durrell!!!!!!!!!!

I am re-reading, for the umpteenth time, his brilliant Corfu trilogy. Oh, how he makes me laugh. And how I wish I were his mother because, unlike me, she never turns a hair at the ridiculous pranks her children get up to. What sort of strong alcoholic drink does she daily imbibe?

I love Adrian Plass!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am not allowing myself to re-read his Sacred Diary trilogy. Instead, I am savoring his hilarious satire of the modern church. It's written as an instruction manual to the layperson wishing to learn the ins and outs of modern churchmanship - reverse psychology at its best, with a bit of red tape thrown in.

Skipping down to the bottom-most book - as my kids get older and more aware of cultural issues and roots and all those other murky aspects of Who I Am, I know the day will come when we will begin some interesting and maybe difficult conversations about identity. As if adolescence weren't thorny enough, our girls will have the additional bits and bobs of belonging to two countries, two cultures, two languages, two lifestyles, two families. They see this delightful marriage of cultures literally in Dave and me, but they are becoming more American each year of their lives and less Singaporean. I feel a little sad that their only experience of Singapore is through the somewhat-skewed eyes and wholly-monolingual tongue of their mother.  They aren't truly third culture kids in the original sense of the phrase, but they will relate to many similar issues in later years, especially if they continue to keep strong ties with their maternal grandparents and their little island in the sun. I hope they do - it will make them amazing, strong, adaptable, confident, interesting young women one day. But it might also make them slightly nuts and that's why I'm reading this book.

Back to the Five Love Languages of Children. I've never read the original version (which was about adults) and the more I meander into parenthood, the more I marvel at the vast amount of frameworks on rearing children. I do believe that, in any major bookstore, just the section on Child Discipline is bigger than the section on sewing stuffed animals. And that's saying something. All this says to me is that children are hard to figure out, but you love them anyway, because you made them. Sort of like a particularly challenging sewing project. Years before I became a mother, I had a mental list of things I would never do. It went like this:

• No watching Barney
• No Disney princesses
• No pink
• Death to Hello Kitty
• No candy
• No fast food
• No TV that wasn't National Geographic
• No obsessing about swimming lessons or gymnastics or ballet class or art camp or playdates or other such superficial silliness
• No meeting up with other narrow-minded mothers who only want to talk about their children's grades, or what sort of friends they want their kids to have, or which teacher was the best in the school. Trivial! Trivial! Trivial! 

and on and on it went.

Funny how actual motherhood changes a person. 

So does that Five Love Languages book make sense or not? You'll have to read it yourself to decide. It isn't the sort of book I'd buy myself - it was given to me, and I have enjoyed reading it. It did make me think of sewing, though, and what the Love Languages of Sewists might be. Here are my Five:

• Hoarding
• Sewing
• Designing
• Swapping
• Nutella

Do you get your main kick from coveting and buying delicious fabric and ideas you know not what to do with? Do you love the actual making and learning to make? Do your thrills come from creating new patterns and interpreting old classics? Do you love the sharing, the camaraderie, the mail swaps, the blogging? Or do you just crave nutella (oh, all right, chocolate)? As with all theoretical frameworks, you can swing in more than one direction, but there is usually one (or two) that define(s) you. You all know mine. What's yours?