Bedsheet Gunne Sax Dress DIY for Autumn | Dressmaking Tutorial

First things first, I found my fabric, which is a bedsheet from Goodwill. As you can see, it's a king size. I then measured the height of the skirt that I wanted, and I was going to do two tiers. So I wanted to make sure that the first tier would be the correct length. I'm actually really excited. So I found the bedsheet last week, I made the pattern, and I was talking about how I had a bedsheet for it, but for some reason I had just, you know, a piece of fabric cut. Well anyway, this is the bedsheet, which is a very similar color. It's a king size. Most of what I need will be for the skirt. So this is 60, so we're going to measure out- what the heck, why does it look like I- wait a minute, is this cut? No, this isn't cut. No, it's not. Look at that. It's cut right here. I don't recall doing that, but okay. Alright, let's measure 60 inches. So I wanted to see if that would be, yeah, plenty. Well, one way to do it is to wrap around her. After I figured out the width that I wanted my waist, and I wanted to two times gather, so after I figured that out, I laid out my bedsheet just to see like how much fabric I'm working with. I decided that I really do like the length of this little gunny sack, the dupe that I already did, that I showed in last week's video. I'm going to do the same length skirt, because up against me, literally the perfect height. I'm just going to copy this length. First tier is going to be 29 plus seam. I wrote 23. Last week I had a different- I had different measurements I thought to my knees, but I really like this one, so we're going to go with this. And then this tier has enough for a ruffle. Let's find a seam. 13 plus rolled hem. Right. Fold her and put her away. So for the skirt, I had to split up the bottom tier into two pieces and then attach them together later, so when I went to go cut it, I basically made the top tier a 60 by 30 inches high, I believe, and that would be to do a two times gathered waist. And then, as you can see, I cut two skinnier rectangles and those would be attached together to form the bottom ruffle. And this is because the bed sheet wasn't long enough on the measurements, so I couldn't just do it in one single long rectangle. So in last week's video- this video is really low- in last week's video for the pattern, I didn't have this on hand, but this sleeve is from- sleeve pattern is from the Simplicity 6940, like a vintage- are they wedding dresses? Maybe just dresses? Anyway, so it's something good to start with. This is the length. It's supposed to have a cuff, so when you see it like that, you might put it a little bit wider. And then I'm going to do a cuff, and basically for the cuff I'm just going to cut out a long rectangle and it's going to fold in half and then have seam allowance. So the length that I want of the cuff, I'll probably do about that length. I'll just measure. Another good thing to do is to measure how far down from that shoulder seam. So about right here is where I'll have the shoulder seam. How far down before it hits where I want the cuff to be. And then a little bit of extra because I want it to poof up a little bit, like I don't want it to just be straight down. That measurement we get 22 and a half or 22 before we get to where the cuff needs to be. So we're going to see if that is the length of this or if we need this to be lengthened as well. Oh, perfect. This one goes down to about 23 and a half. So the sleeve ended up not being as long as I would have wanted it, so I definitely would have lengthened it, but at the time I thought it was going to be fine. So it is what it is. I also thought I would do it poofier, but it ended up being the perfect amount of poof for what I was going for. Also, as you can see here, I'm cutting a cuff out. If you're interested in how I came about making this pattern, I did talk about it in last week's video. So if you haven't seen that already, feel free to watch it. But otherwise, I just sort of made this pattern up from a bodice block. It actually worked out really well. So in last week's video, I edited the pattern and I never actually tested the second piece. So I ended up just cutting one layer so that I can test it out before I cut a second one for lining. It's actually been a couple days or so. I've actually been having a really rough week. I've come to the realization that my stress levels were still continuing to go up and raise. My blood pressure is still high. Half of the time, I'm going to be honest, I can't get myself to come to my sewing room. And then that depresses me. Anyway, there's a chance that really, really soon I will be switching my schedule around. Also, this is random, but I got some thread for my project, a zipper for my project, and potential buttons. All my pieces are cut and they've just been sitting here since Saturday. It is now Tuesday and I want this video to be up on Friday like I told you guys. So hopefully this is the day that it's out, Friday. And you may or may not be watching it on Friday, but yes, this is the day I hope to put this video out here and make this dress exist. Okay, I don't know why my camera cut out, but anyway. But we are going to continue this. There have been so many times that I came to my camera in the past and I would tell you guys in past videos if you've been around of the things I was going through and it feels like I've really been attacked by so many things this year that I've really made it super hard for me to focus. It's made it hard for me to really stick to my goals, but the one thing that I hold onto is that I still made something work and that I've been posting every single week for the past six months and counting, almost seven months at this point. And I don't give up. I keep going and I remind myself, like, you've got it in you. You can totally do this. I'm excited to share this with you. And you know, I'm not going to worry about whether I did my hair or my makeup. I just want to be able to get back in the groove. So I'm going to potentially be changing my schedule. I've considered waking up early in the morning. Now, I am not a morning person at all, okay? I'm a night owl. I've always been that way, but because now I have a son, usually I spend my daytimes with him. And so I don't get to my sewing room until nighttime and it's just been getting really bad. I'm spending all of my energy at night and basically none of it in the beginning of the day. I'm just taking forever to get up, taking forever to get my toddler, and doing the bare minimum. Long story short, it is not working for me. My stress is too high. My mental health is just not the best. And because I'm not making money from YouTube, it's really hard for me sometimes to focus on it because I start to worry about our finances if we have, like, a bad month because I'm not technically contributing. And my husband, he's a provider at heart. You know, this isn't something that bothers him. And I'm so thankful for that, that, you know, he's allowing me to explore this, but I still care. Like, I still want to feel like I can contribute to the finances because we live in such a hard time. That being said, I know that I gotta keep going and I can turn this into something, you know? And I have so many ideas that I want to share with you guys really soon of where my heart's at, where I want to take this channel, where I want to take my dressmaking, the brand that I want to build, and also how I want to go about it. I have made hints in the past, but I haven't fully just told you guys. Do stick around to hear that story and to hear exactly what's going on. I just have to get my thoughts together for that, but it's a video I have in my mind to share with you guys the heart of my dressmaking and my dreams and my goals. Without further ado, let's continue to this gummi sacks dress. So after all your pieces are cut, just start lining them up and sewing all the seams together. Right here I'm doing the bust seam. Although this is not like a formal tutorial of any kind and I'm not selling any sort of pattern with it, I will try my best to explain what I'm doing and I try to record pretty much every step. So if anything is confusing or you're not sure what I did, feel free to let me know in a comment and I'll try my best to explain if it's not explained in this video. Basically I just put the center front with the side front together and then before adding the waist part, I knew I wanted to iron it flat and that way it would be a lot easier to line up the bottom piece once I add it. Also because it's super satisfying to iron. I don't know what it is, but it's just super satisfying. There's the waist part. So after I ironed it all, I attached it all together. I did not put the center back slash side back, which is all one piece, would be added after I put this little waistband in. Now that the waistband part is in, I am going to iron that and then I will be able to attach my side back? No, back. I guess it's a side back and a center back. I'll just say back piece. After I iron this nice and flat, I'll then be able to attach the back pieces. Also, I clipped the seams so that they didn't bunch up. Here's the back piece and now we're going to attach it to the sides as well as the shoulder seams. So basically I wasn't thinking about the tie straps, so I would have attached them here had I remembered. But since I didn't, I will also show you later on in the video how I ended up fixing that problem. Also, before putting in the side seams, I probably would have put on the decorative trim that I ended up putting on later and the ribbon. So yeah, I basically jumped to the, not the side seams, but the back portion of the dress. I would have attached it later, but yeah, I ended up attaching it right away because I was all over the place just trying to figure out which order to go in without any instructions just making it up as I go. So I tested it out, put it on the dress form, and tried to get a sense of like, is it worth it to make another piece like this? Do I need to fix something? Um, I forgot the straps. You know the ties? Oh gosh, I forgot to cut them out and insert them. No big deal. Literally all I have to do is seam rip just enough to put them in. It's totally fine. The way that I'm going to make these ties is to basically use this, but I'm going to fold one of the little sides so it doesn't have a seam and that way I can cut it on the fold. And then I'm just going to make sure it's long enough, but that's the width that I'm going to go with. It's the width of this plus seam allowance. It's fine. Look, mistakes happen, so let's get to cutting. I measured the tie strap that I had on the last gunny sack stoop I did because I thought it was the perfect length. I ended up just cutting the width of the waistband part of the pattern. So I turned them inside out so that I could put right sides together and then I got all my thread and bobbin and whatnot ready and sewed the tie straps. And of course I ran out of bobbin thread. What's new? So the first time I did it, I flipped it like this. This took so long and I'll show you how I end up just using my loop turner, but it is technically a way to do it if you don't have a loop turner and if it's thick enough. It's kind of funny though watching it in time lapse when I like flick it. It reminds me of like a little cat scratching his head or something. Or no, a hamster. Oh my gosh. Leave a comment if you've ever had a dwarf hamster. Me and my sister like literally were so obsessed with them when we were kids, but there were so many times that they would escape their cage and one time they like were hiding somewhere and we found them under the stove and we had to like bribe them out with food. My mom would get so mad at us if we like didn't catch the hamsters. Anyway, here I used a loop turner and it went way faster. And I don't know why I was talking about hamsters. Once you turn them inside out, be sure to iron them nice and flat and just as much as you can because it's really hard to fold it correctly, but I just kind of wiggle my fingers until I get as much as I can. Just as much as I can so I can iron it properly. I also attached pins as you can see to hold it down or you can put something heavy or clip it and that made it a lot easier for me to pull on it as I ironed it across while pushing out the seams so that it's nice and flat and full and everything. Super satisfying to watch but took forever. Also this is me seam ripping. This is how I solved my problem. I just had to seam rip it open and insert the tie which later I ended up seam ripping this again because I didn't put the decorative trim before attaching that back piece. So this is me learning as I go what order I should have gone in and messing up along the way because I was just like going ham. Determined. So I attached that tie and then I sandwiched it inside the bodice pieces. Sometimes when I have to fix things, they're not that hard. Some issues are not the worst. Like this one was a really easy one to fix. Now I'm sewing the sleeves together. Sewing that inside seam right there. I attached it to the bodice and then I basically just gathered it by hand and pinning it. I did it in like tiny little increments of just like pleating it. Tiny little pleats. I was kind of lazy. Like I didn't want to do a gathering stitch or anything. I just kind of wanted to like make it happen. You might find that a lot of my methods are out of pure laziness because I like to just get things done really fast. You can see all the pins because I was just pleating it. Starting from the top center of the sleeve and then I pinned, pleated it towards the center on one side and then towards the center on the other side. Not sure if that makes sense but I basically only had it pleated on the top part of the arm and then the rest was just flat on the arm seam or whatever. Don't ask. So here I am sewing it up and there you can see the poof. I was digging the poof. There's the other poof. Okay guys, so we came across a dilemma. But that's okay. We're going to sort through this dilemma. I cannot find ribbon in this color. In a thinner ribbon. Basically the same kind I used for the last Benny Sacks dupe that I did. So I'm going to have to go on another hunt because I was already hunting for it yesterday. We're on a new day today. However, I did want to make this a partial behind the scenes, partial I'm showing you what I'm doing. So it's not like an official tutorial but it's kind of a tutorial. Not really. It's more like a guidance. It's not perfect. And we are still figuring out things together. Like what am I going to do about the ribbon part? I'm close. The bodice is ready for the ribbon. How is this happening? If I can't find it, I will compromise. And I'll figure something out. I ordered ribbon from the store. They substituted it for... I'll show you. Apparently I have a lot of thicker kind though. Because I've got two of them. Maybe that's why I thought I had it. I don't know. They substituted it for this. This is not the right kind. This is Offray. And it's white. And I don't want white. Because I feel like the cream color with this dark red. Okay, it's a bit of a crooked angle. But that color, if you put white with it, to me it looks Christmassy. I'm not vibing with the Christmas look. So I couldn't go to the store. And I need this dress to be literally done like ideally tonight. Worst case tomorrow. Actually no, worst case is tonight. Oh my gosh, it's Wednesday. I gotta finish this dress. I'm a little behind. I'm just wasting time talking about it. So let's just figure it out. And I'll let you know on the other side what happened. So I actually ended up finding that ribbon. It was in my little sewing box. Which was like underneath my desk. But it didn't have enough. But you'll see later where I ended up using some of it for just a small portion of it. Anyway, here I am making the lining. And I actually had to attach the little waist seam on each of the pieces that were like split up. Because I didn't need the lining to have that waistband or anything on it. It just needed to be flat. And I also did the center front on the fold. And that made it a little less to stitch together for the lining. And of course you gotta iron them so that they're not super wrinkly like this was. But look how satisfying that is. Alright, so as you can see that center front was on a fold. And now I'm just attaching the side front. I think that this pattern from the bodice block I got ended up being a pretty good fit. I did tweak it a bit so that it was like properly fitted to me. But in last week's video I shared where and how I went about making this pattern. But I'll also link the bodice block that I used to get the seams for this one. Right here I am marking the lines that I wanted the ribbons to go on. I wanted them to go straight down. And since I actually did find that thinner ribbon, I measured it out and it was gonna be like literally exactly what I needed. I also made sure that I had the seam allowance. To factor in because I was working with barely any ribbon. For one of the trims that I wanted towards the middle, it wasn't the right color. So I soaked it in hot coffee. This is me testing out some ideas. None of these ideas ended up working, but I managed later on as you'll see. So here are the skirt rectangles. And I wanted to make notches. Like each, you know, one quarter. Yeah, I just wanted to make four notches throughout it. I also needed to sew together the skinnier tier for the bottom. To make that longer 120 inch rectangle. So here I am sewing it together. I was gonna do French seams, but somehow I screwed that up and I'm not even surprised. After I got that going, I changed my stitch length to be really low tension. And really wide stitches. And then I went ahead and put a basting stitch. I decided to do two basting stitches. Because that is like the best way to be honest. To get a more, you know, spot on. Like you just sew in between the lines after you gather it. And it reduces the risk of like, you know, some of the pleats or whatever. Just folding in or messing up. So I do prefer it this way. It's just a little extra work. I lined up all the notches that I created on the skinny tier. And then the top tier. Like I said, I made notches. Four notches throughout the whole thing. So I lined each one up. And then after I line them up, I will pull on the gathering stitches. And get it all, you know, to the right. As you can see, I'm pulling it. This is like super satisfying to be honest. Also, don't ask why I'm wearing a Raiders t-shirt. I tried to hide it in half the video so I didn't have some logo. But it is what it is. Anyway, so I stitched the gathered bottom tier to the top tier of the skirt. And I sewed it on there. These clips actually came in handy to make sure that, you know, it all stayed in place. I sewed right between my gathering stitches or my basting stitches. After that, you'll see the basting stitches. You can pull those out. I usually make them in like a bright color or just a different color. Generally, I pick a color that, you know, isn't going to be a waste for me. Because it's probably something I thrifted. And it's a color that I probably will never use. So I'm taking out all of the basting stitches. They're all in here, living their best lives. Just gonna cut that excess off. We're almost there guys, it is 2.30am. But I'm finally putting the skirt together. And then I'm going to put the skirt on and attach it to the bodice. Because I can't technically do the trim until I attach it to the bodice. Or sorry, until I attach the bodice to the skirt. Because I need the trim to go over the skirt seam. We're just gonna go ahead and do the skirt. I could probably serge it in white. Since it's underneath and you can't see it. Probably this, because this is crazy if I don't serge it. See all the green? I like to use a random colored thread. I usually use thread that I know I'll probably never use for anything else. Because it's like an ugly color. Such as lime green. No offense to those who like lime green. I'm not a fan of what's going on here, lime green. Almost there. Why is this funny to me? This is my skirt. It looks like a cute skirt. Almost there. Okay, so now that we have the bodice. I needed to attach it to the skirt. So I made some notches and lined it all up. But I needed to do this because one of the trims that I was going to use. Would have been over the waist seam. So I wanted to make sure I got that skirt on first. After I put that basting stitch in which you just saw. I attached the notches that I also made for the bodice and the skirt to match up. So that it's evenly distributed. After I pinned it all together. I then grabbed that thread and pulled at it. So that I could gather it to the right length. I didn't do the double basting stitch or anything. I just did one. And so it was a little bit more work for me to have to make sure none of the pleats fold over or anything. Anyway, so I changed my thread color and moved on to the ribbon. This is the only amount of ribbon I had in this size. And the store still didn't have it. So I barely made it work. I wanted this, I think it's 3 eighth inch ribbon. And a cream satin. So I lined it up with those markings that I made. And sewed down the very edge of both sides of the ribbon. Because I didn't make this one with the ties or anything like a lot of gunny sacks have. I used this trim because it kind of mimicked the idea of that. And I feel like it worked out well just for the fact that I didn't have any other options. Please ignore the stain on my shirt. It's the next day. I gotta finish this dress. So I can edit this video tonight. Because I'm so excited to get this out for you guys. Now you're watching it. But I was previously stressing to get it done. I just wanted to kind of do a little check in here. So we've got, I gotta serge the insides here. But this is going to cover the raw inside. Once I get the lining in, then I will serge the edge of the lining to this seam. Which is the skirt and bodice connection. The lining will help make that neckline be nice and perfect and clean. Also, I will serge the armholes on the inside. Also, I'm going to put the cuffs on the sleeves. Let's get to it. We are so close. Once I'm done, I will then hem it. Make sure it's the right length. Cut it shorter if I need to. We're so close. We're so close. Now it is time to attach the lining bodice to the main bodice. Now that I have all the trims in and the ribbons, I want to be able to close it off and give it that clean look. If you made it this far in the video, I just want to say thank you guys so much for watching, for supporting my channel. I am trying my very best to grow. It has been such a dream to be on YouTube and finally make it happen. Dressmaking has also just been very therapeutic for me. I feel like I can truly use my talents in this because I've always been really good at math and I'm also a perfectionist, which is kind of a struggle sometimes. But thank you guys for being here. I really appreciate it. Then I understitched it. That way the lining would line up perfectly once I folded it over and ironed it afterwards. Here I am lining up those edges of the neckline that I just sewed together and making sure it's ironed so that it lines up and is flattened out. This fabric is pretty thin, but it ended up being totally fine. But I will say it was pretty thin fabric. Also, this is the solution I came up with for the waistband. I attached a thicker ribbon. Unfortunately, I didn't have any more thin ribbon and I couldn't find any. But I attached the thick one nonetheless and I decided to just go with it. Okay, a huge reason why I don't technically do tutorials right now is because I'm still just discovering new ideas, designs, and I'm having fun with it. And whenever it's the first time that I do a design or a particular style, I usually just do it in random orders and figure it out, but sometimes I make mistakes. And now is one of those moments that I made a mistake. And since I turned this video into a somewhat tutorial, kind of more like a this is how I did it, it may not be the best way. I will try to tell you if I made a mistake. So, I made one. On this ribbon that I sewed across, you know, I didn't have a thinner one. I ran out of thin one, so I had to use a thick one. But when it got to this part right here, where the tie is on the side seam, I had already put all this together because I kind of just wanted to just do as much as I can when I didn't have ribbon. But generally, I would have not attached the side pieces until I got all of these little decorations done. It's fine though, because I undid the seam. You can see this little band wanting to come out. And now I'm going to shove this ribbon in the open seam. There we go. Now it's in there. I also need to put the band back in there. And then we're going to go to the back side where it's all connected. And we're going to, yeah, sew it back. So, that's the side seam with the ribbon and the back tie. I just inserted that ribbon in there so it can have a clean finish. And I did, on the other side, see, I left the ribbon flat. And what I'm going to do is open up that seam like I did on the other side, shove it in there, and re-sew it. Since the lining is not sewn to the inside or anything like that, I left it open. That allows me, I have the time to, you know, fix those things. So, yeah, let's sew it. Hey, Google, play the music. No, no, don't touch it. Look at that. What do you think? Do you like it? It's a... It's called a cuff. Can you say cuff? It's good? Oh, thank you. It's good. It's funny. I love you, Mimi. Alright, go ahead. In this next part, I am now sewing the cuffs to the sleeve. I gathered the sleeve and made the cuffs finished off and everything. So this is where I put the gathering stitch and I made notches for this as well, and then lined those notches up with the cuff. That was just a folded rectangle, basically. And then I rolled hemmed... Rolled hemmed? Wait, hemmed? I did rolled hems on the edge of it, and then I attached, as you can see, the notches that I made. I attached those in the appropriate spots. So, again, I split it into four and put notches to make sure that it was evenly distributed with the sleeve. I then sewed it together and flipped it inside out. Also, with the raw edges that I had, I ended up doing a rolled hem, and that's the part where I open it up from the actual sleeve so that there is space for my hand to go in. Technically, I was going to do a button, but I ended up getting lazy and didn't do a button, so we're going to ignore that when the final reveal happens. Just don't look at the sleeves. Don't look at the cuffs! Just pretend that they have a button and they're closed, and that I wasn't lazy. So, I decided I wanted to put this knit stay tape. I know it says knit, but it's all I have, and it works pretty well for what I'm trying to do. Just kind of strengthen the neckline. I'm going to go from the back all the way down. Okay, so I finally got to a point where I was able to serge a lot of these nasty raw edges that fray so easily. This is one of my favorite parts. I love serging. It's like that perfectionist in me that sees it go from crazy fraying to in control and looking clean. So I did all of the raw edges that the gathered parts were, like the sleeves, the cuffs, and the waist seam. Here I am about to serge the inside of the sleeves. This is after the lining was attached. For the center back, where the zipper would be, I serged that edge but I ended up only doing it on one side because I realized I didn't want to do it again because I was lazy. So that's what I'm doing here, but I only did it to one side. You can see the difference it makes and you can just learn from this if you'd rather serge it or keep it raw and hide it under the zipper. I was lazy. Also, if you are wondering at this point, why am I serging it with white thread? One, too lazy to switch colors. Two, I only have white and black, so it's not like I had red anyway. So here I'm showing you how I basically base stitched the back seam where the zipper would go so that it's all lined up straight and then I'm going to sew the zipper on properly onto that sewed part and then later I will seam rip it open. So I use my zipper foot attach that on and that way I was able to get this brand new zipper. There are video tutorials on YouTube you can find of how to insert a zipper this way so I would highly recommend looking up some methods and see what works for you. Here I am sewing on each side of the zipper as far down as it goes. I did use a 22-24 inch zipper, I believe, is the length. The longest zipper I could get, basically since it is a really high back. I then seam ripped it open so that I could access the zipper so that I could do the top but I kept the top part connected so it stayed lined up and then after I got the zipper attached I ended up seam ripping the rest of it open so we could see how it turned out. It wasn't like the perfect straightest thing ever but it worked out pretty good. I then used this lace trim so I can put it around the seam at the bottom tier of the skirt. I thought that would look really pretty. Also, make sure you drink your water! So I basically just top stitched this right along the seam of the gathered part on the bottom of the skirt and made sure to use a matching thread and just stitched all the way across. I put the same kind of lace along the neckline So I'm going to start at the back I just cut the lace like that and then we'll just line it up like this and then I'll do it right there at the edge all the way across and we'll just top stitch it. We're getting close! So since I have enough of this lace that I've been using I was debating putting it on the sleeves and then I was just like, you know what? That's pretty cute. So I needed to hem it about an inch and a half to two inches shorter than what it was so I went ahead and ironed it at the length that I wanted to cut it at and then I just left a little bit of that extra allowance so that I could do this rolled hem. I used the rolled hem foot. It is just super easy for me so I usually prefer to use that and then I basically did the rolled hem all the way along the bottom of the dress. This is like the best part knowing that I'm like literally so close to being done. And here is the final look. I will put it on after I get these shots here. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If there's a few things I would change it would probably be the cuffs the sleeve length and the skirt. I think I would have preferred a circle skirt. This was just a rectangle to make it easy but honestly I would have preferred the circle skirt. Otherwise, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope it helped in any sort of way.