Milkmaid Dress Tutorial - etailed Sew With Me - Cottage Core Dress using a free pattern

00:06 - I’ve been wanting to make a Milkmaid dress for quite a while and when I saw that lydia Noami posted a free pattern I took that as a sign for me to go for it. It’s my first time making a dress with boning, but I figured it was good practice for the victorian corset I want to make one day. This dress has all of ruffles pleating and Gathering that I always dreamed of but I’m also a bit intimidated by, so let’s quickly get started and get ready to actually make this dress together, it will be a learning experience for us both! Here is what I used: my outer fabric, my lining, my boning, elastic, interface, a zipper.

00:56 - And finally the pattern. Like I said the top pattern is from Lydia noami. I’ll link her video tutorial where she shares the pattern in the description box, please go check it out!. I did end up making a different skirt that her design because I wanted to incorporate even more gathering in my dress.

01:18 - Next it’s time to start ironing at least that is if you you you pre-wash your fabric first.

01:24 - this is obviously quite some work because you’ve got 4 m of fabric to work with if you’re like me and it feels like it will never end, but I promise you it will make it so much easier to work neatly which is quite important when doing a corset top so yeah iron it all.

01:43 - After ironing all the fabric that we will be using we’re ready to cut out all our pieces, I will be following the pattern for the most part but because this fabrics frays a lot, I will be adding an extra cm or two at the bottom of each bodice pieces to give me some extra fabric to work with. now for my gathered skirt I folded my fabric as neatly as possible so I can can cut out my strips in one go. You can see the sizes that I used on the screen right down I mostly went for these sizes because I had 4 m of fabric and I wanted to gather each strip together in the tier above it.

Which honestly my math could probably have been better, but oh well… This is my bodice lining, with interfacing. My lining sleeve and lining bust without interfacing.

02:41 - Then I got my fashion fabric. I had to re-cut the center piece, cent-front piece. Because I forgot I wanted to add boning there, so I can’t cut it on the fold. So I added seam allowance in the middle and as I showed didn’t cut it on the fold, so that’s the new cut.

03:03 - And then I got the ties for the bust piece and the bias tape for around the armholes.

03:10 - So yeah we finally got everything ready to start sewing, or actually start serging because this fabric… god… it frays, it really does.

03:22 - So like I said we’re going to be spending the next bit of time serging our pieces and it’s all going to be worth it, it just takes a bit of time and patience so you know just serge away. Our final bit of prep is Ironing our bust straps. we’re ironing the straps like bias tape so folding both the raw edges to the middle and ironing, and then folding it once again hiding of the raw edges inside of the bias tape. finally just wind up your bobbin thread and we are ready to start sewing on the bodice.

04:04 - we are first quickly sewing down our bust straps that we just ironed, next starting from the middle we’re going to be attaching our bodice pieces right sides together.

04:28 - after I did the centre piece I’m attaching the sides and continue working your way outwards. When you’re done your seams you can press them open, yes more ironing and then stitch them down on the right sides for a clean finish, make sure to pull your fabric tight when you do this. To keep everything nice and clean.

05:11 - Next I’m putting together the back pieces of my dressed same way and then attaching those to the front only leaving the centre back open for my zipper. Here you can see my bodice pieces of both the lining and the outer fabric put together. They should be the same size if you worked neatly. I finished the seams on the the lining fabric a bit different. instead of opening them up push both layers of fabric to one side and sew it down to create a channel for your boning to go into.

Now you can cut boning for each of your channels making sure to leave enough space for your seam allowance at the top and the bottom. Then I sand down the edges to make them nice and round, this is not necessary but it is more comfortable to make and it will make the chance of your boning poking through your fabric a lot smaller. And finally you can slide your boning into place.

06:18 - we can now work on our bust pieces, place them right sides together and sew up about halfway to the middle seam, then press open your your seam. next we’re going to be sewing Gathering threads at the bottom of the bust cups. to do this we’re going to be setting our stitch length to longest possible setting on our machine and sewing two lines of stitches in our seam allowance.

06:42 - I don’t start or end these stitches with backtracking because we’re going to be using them to gather our fabric. I like to sew my first stitchline farther from the edge of my piece, and then my second stitchline in between the first stitch line and the edge of my fabric. This will make sure I keep everything within the seam allowance.

07:01 - we can now gather our fabric so it fits into our bust cups. when you have gathered your fabric the right amount you can now pin it in place right sides together with your bodice, making sure to keep most of your gathering at the centre of your bust cups. This will be the most flathering. You will also no need to make a small snip into your bust piece at the center seam so you can pin it in place properly, is centrepoint will be also the point where you will pivot while sewing the seam.

07:43 - and then you are ready to carefully sew it down. it’s finally starting to look like a top now just repeat this process for our lining fabric.

08:24 - Now we can place our two bodices right sides togheter and place our bust ties in between the two layers. I also folded over and ironed the edges of both of my layers of fabric. next I’m pinning the top of the two pieces together. we will be sewing these down only skipping the armholes. This will also keep her bust ties in place. as you can see I’m going very very slowly to make sure I get my seams exactly where I them to be. Next we’re going to understitch the seam we just made on the lining side.

09:51 - after understitching we’re going to be attaching or elastic to our bust ties on the inside. we are now ready to create the channel for our elastic to go through. using the top of our bust ties placement as a guide I’m sewing down a stitch-line at the top of my cup. Then I pull my elastic to lay flat against the seam I’ve just stitched. We can now sew on the other side of our elastic, pressing my zipper foot to the edge of the elastic while sewing, without actually hitting the elastic itself and thus creating a channel for our elastic to go through.

now be very careful and go slowly because if you hit your elastic on accident you’re gonna have to start over. You can now pull your elastics to gather your bust cup as much as you want, it might be handy to try on your dress for this part. After you’ve got your elastic on the lenght you want it you can stitch it down Repeat and the other side and you’re now ready to serge your armholes in preparation for the sleeves. we’re now finished with the basic corset top So let’s move on to the sleeves.

start with putting your fabric and lining right sides together and sewing down the bottom seam. next understitch on your lining side And we’re now ready to create a channel for the elastic to go through on the sleeve. we are sewing a straight line about an inch from the bottom of the sleeves. then sewing another line above that leaving enough space for our elastic to go through. finally I can use my bobby pin to actually loop through the channel I just made and as you can see, we’ve create the bottom ruffle.

Next we are gonna pin in place our sleeve facing on the sleeve cap and sew in place. Once again understitch your seam allowance on your lining side. Next we’re going to be closing up our sleeves and sewing down the bottom seam and of course pressing it open. We can now attach our sleeves to the bodice. I start with lining up up my side seam and my bottom sleeves seam and pin from there. I also unpicked the bits of bias tape that overlapped with my armhole seams so I could use it the bias tape to cover up up.

my seams on the inside. After I’ve done that I can sew my sleeves into place Next I’m going to pin down my bias tape in my sleeve cup to create a channel for my elastic to go through the same way as I did before. I’m trying to have my channel start at about the same height as my bust channel ends. afterwards once again lopping my elastic through with a bobby pin and pinning it place, now let’s try it on to figure out how tight we want the elastic in the shoulder seam to be.

and this is what my bodice is looking like right now, looks pretty good to me. So we can sew our elastic in place.

14:49 - And that’s our actual bodice pretty much done so let’s move on to our skirt. I’ve serged all the edges of my tiers except for my bottom hem Which I actually cut on the selvedge to save myself some time. next we are going to be sewing two lines of Gathering stitches at the top of each piece.

15:30 - for the bottom piece I’m ironing over the salvage and since I didn’t really take a hem in consideration when I was doing the math for these pieces I’m only following it over once and then sewing it down now before we start the actual gathering I’m going divide each of my pieces into 4 and Mark each part. this way I can evenly spread out my ruffles along the fabric later on. so I’m just basically folding my fabric into two, marking the fold at the top and the bottom and then folding the fabric in two once again marking and once again marking the fold at the top and bottom Now we can do the actually the gathering.

starting with my second tier I first gather the fabric till it’s the same length as the tier above it. then I I put my two layers right sides together and using the markings I made divide the gatherings evenly across the smallest tier. then pin it all in place. you can now carefully sew it together. now we just got to repeat this process for the other two tiers. now since had 4 meters of fabric to work with I decided it would be easy to go with tiers of 1, 2, 3, and 4 meters.

As you can see that means there’s more gathering in the second-tier then for example in the third and fourth I personally don’t mind I still like how it looks, but if you want to prevent that, you could also go with 1, 2, 4, 8 meters, you just need a bit more fabric.

18:35 - but yeah, that’s the skirt basically all put together, pretty simple if I say so myself.

18:57 - we can now move on to a final part and it’s putting the skirt and bodice together.

19:04 - Now since I had a lined bodice but an unlined skirt decided to sandwich my skirt in between my two layers of bodice and hand baste it in I’m going to be sandwiching my zipper inbetween my lining and outer fabric pieces in the bodice but I first need to close up my skirt so I measure out my zipper length on my dress my skirt and closed up the bottom of my skirt. Then I pin my zipper in place very carefully and then sew it in by hand because I suck at sewing in zippers, especially by machine.

Now we’re almost done the only thing that we still have to do is to actually sew our waist seam, and not just baste it So using my machine and being careful I stitch down my waist seam. I can now take out my basting stitch and my milkmaid dress is finally done. I’m so happy with how this turned out and honestly It wasn’t even half as hard as I expected it to be It just took a bit of time and concentration and a bit of precise working to make sure all my pieces matched up If you made it this far then thank you so much for watching.

I’m personally really happy with how this dress turned out but I blee… (talking is hard) But I love to hear your opinion And obviously if you have any questions or maybe suggestions, I always love to hear them.

21:41 - thank you so much for watching and hopefully I’ll see you next time… Bye!.