Beginner's Dream: Sew a Kimono Dress - Step-by-Step DIY Tutorial - Quick Sewing Project

I'm going to make this kimono dress out of this beautiful red fabric in less than 30 minutes. Grab the pattern it's in the description come along and let's make a beautiful kimono dress out of your favorite fabric. I've got this dress here this is the example and this I made in a previous video showing you how to use the pattern. This is made out of black satin it's like duchess weight satin it's very luxurious very thick black satin and it's absolutely gorgeous. What I want to do today is make something out of cotton but not just regular cotton. I wanted to use this I'm going to bring it right up. Cotton plissé it's called. So like a lot of fabrics the name comes from the French plissé means crinkled or puckered. It looks like tiny little pleats and what it has is a lot of give. So this is technically a non-stretch fabric there's no spandex there's no lycra there's nothing in this to give it a stretch in the actual yarn but it's the way it's been woven that gives it a lot more movement. Look at that there what how it's made is the fabric is woven has two different types of yarn and they shrink one of them once the fabric has been woven which means that some of the yarns are pulling in and other yarns are pulling out so you get this stretched and it always comes back so if I stretch that like that it almost goes straight but you see it always comes back to that pleated or plissé appearance. It's really cool it's really comfortable it's a fantastic fabric to make a summer dress from especially because the air gets through it and it has more coverage than just flat cotton so it's a really exciting texture it's a really exciting fabric to use. Now using cotton plissé can be a bit tricky because when you press it you press all the creases out and then a second later they all come back so you have to you're constantly working with the fabric to get it to do what you want but this is a really simple pattern and it's so easy so it will go up really well with this with this kind of fabric and it's going to look fantastic. Also you don't have to have as much because of the movement of the fabric it will cover more than what you have so when the fabric is held just like this and all the little pleats are in there it's 90 centimeters wide but it actually is 120 centimeters wide when it's stretched and so in wear it's about halfway between that it's about 110 centimeters so I'm going to use this it will make about uh between a small and a medium from the pattern and if I wanted to make a bigger one I could just cut off an extra strip of this if I bought some extra and put it in the back to put a different strip or put it down the side but I'll show you how I make it out of this size fabric so we've got two meters exactly and it's about 110 centimeters in width so that's 2.2 yards or 43 inches in width. First thing you do is you press the whole bit of fabric with the selvedges running along together so this is basically get the yardage and fold it in half like that so your selvedges are meeting and then fold that in half again so you've folded something into four you've got a top corner there with two folds emanating from it you've got two loops here where the folds come over and then at the other end you have the four separate corners like that get your fabric into that position and then we can start to mark and cut so here we are the fabric is folded into four I've got the top corner over here with the little point that is the neck up here I've got the two loops or the two folds that emanate from that top corner they are your sleeves so that's where your hand will come out they're the cups up here then I'm going to find the sleeves and the side seam so the sleeves come down here like a kimono with long gracious sleeves like this and then we have a side seam down the back it's really very simple and it only takes a few measurements they're all included in the pattern so grab that down below there's also a printable template for the neckline up here but I'll show you how you can do that really easily without even having to use it first thing I'll do is the neckline I come down two inches or five centimeters from the top down this long side here and I mark that in on this back fold so this is the center back but there's no seam there or anything and then along the top here so from the neck heading towards the cuffs I come along four inches or 10 centimeters because this fabric has a natural stretch to it I've come in one inch less for the neckline instead of being 12.5 centimeters or five inches it's four inches or 10 centimeters I've taken a little bit off the neckline just to deal with the natural stretch in the fabric so you've got these two points and what you need to do is join them up with a bit of a curve so you start straight on one side and then you come down to make a half moon curve around the neck there as I said you can do this using the template in the pattern which is in the link below it prints out on a piece of A4 paper and you can sit it on top of there and use it like that otherwise you're just pinning it in it's not the hardest thing to do it's just a little half moon shape that straightens out as you come to the center back next I need to create the sleeves come down from the top bit here where we said that the cuffs are and come down 50 centimeters or 20 inches I'll mark that in and then I'll show you what that does so it makes a really beautiful wide sleeve you see this in garment construction this is a technical kimono sleeve because it's attached to the body a Japanese kimono sleeve like this that's on my yukata I've got right now that's attached to the body with a seam here and it hangs free at the side seam a technical kimono sleeve in garment construction just means that there's no seam between the sleeve and the body and it's all one big piece and that's what makes this pattern so easy but it also creates this beautiful so you can see it's as long as the sleeve on my yukata as well and makes really beautiful big gracious sleeves like that and they hang down and even when your arms up you can see it's all hanging down like this absolutely fantastic so I came down 50 centimeters or 20 inches next thing I need to do is find the side seam so I come in from the side here and I'm trying to find where I'm gonna line up there and we come in by 30 centimeters or 12 inches but of course you can make this longer so what we're creating is this shape here on the dress we're creating this shape here that comes in to make the dress t-shaped like that we're creating that so you can make this as long and as short as you want you could have it out to here and just have tiny little sort of cuffs that hang down or you can make it really long so they come all the way down to your wrists it also depends on how much fabric you have and what this measurement around here is so in the pattern I've got a whole breakdown of how you make the right measurement to your size and how you can measure yourself to find that out and the other thing about this dress is the gathering the beauty of the dress is that it blouses blousing is this it's where you have it gathered underneath and then it falls over top and makes these beautiful shapes around the waist this makes the waist appears smaller and it makes the whole person have this beautiful mid-century line when they're wearing the dress to create that you need extra fabric around you so you need to have what's called ease but a lot of it so then we can gather it up and create these beautiful drapes that fall down plus this blouse waistline around here that's used by making this rope as well but what you need to do is have about 8 inches or 20 centimeters more around your waist so it's a lot of ease that you're trying to create around here and the more you have the more blousing you have and the more gathers you have around the skirt so as much as you want to put in you can and also you can add extra strips of fabric to create more ease if you need it so if you have your fabric and it's not big enough you can always add a contrast in on one side or something like that there's amazing things you can do with this pattern but the best place to start is to add at least 20 centimeters or 8 inches for the ease so you can create that beautiful drape from this left leg down here coming in by 30 centimeters or 12 inches and that's from this mark on the sleeve so you want to try and get it accurate so once you've measured in 12 inches or 30 centimeters come down from the top and check that it matches up with that 50 centimeters or 20 inches and get across there you're just sort of squaring it that's all you're doing and then come down make a couple of marks down the garment here this is your side seam so what we're trying to find is this rectangle here which we'll cut out to make the t-shaped dress if you find that it's not big enough around your hips you can also cut this with a circular shape by coming out on a diagonal because we have a lot of extra fabric that we can use here of course by doing this it means that your fabric is off grain so it will move slightly differently on these seams but it's like making a circle skirt just from here and in order to do that you would find the length from this point in the center here from this underarm corner you'd find the length down to the hem on the straight and then you would take that length and you would pace it out around here to make the corner and then like we did with the neckline you join that up with a curve and you cut off that little curve bit that's going to make you a flared dress so it will come out more from the hips like that if you have larger hips this is great because the skirt will fall out and down and still have that gathering effect at the waist there as well but for the purpose of this one i'm going to do it straight in and down there's the pattern cut from one of these rectangles that we've cut down here from the t-shape you make your cords your belts and you can use all four of them to do so or you can just use one and make a nice thin one this one i used just one and made it from the exact same fabric you can also use a completely different fabric or maybe some cording passimentary something like that there's a lot of different options you can go for but the easiest way grab one of these and cut it into three and you make your cords out of that just before you sew you need to mark in your belt loops so they are four inches you mark four inches down from this corner here in the t-shape so under the arm mark four inches or 10 centimeters and then mark another four inches or 10 centimeters from there make sure that's on every layer of the fabric because you never know which part you're going to use unless you have one sided fabric so we know where this is on all four layers and it helps line up the whole pattern as well this will help us find where to put the belt loops the belt loops go in that second four inch or 10 centimeter mark so not right up until this corner but just on the next part down that's how this lifts up and creates this blousing effect around the waist it's a really clever dress take one of the extra rectangles that you have left over cut it into thirds take one of those thirds and cut off 10 centimeters or four inches and cut that in half lengthwise let's go make a belt and some loops your two belt loops should look like this two lovely little strips of fabric fold that in half and sew a quarter inch or five mil seam allowance down one side and then we'll turn them out like that then you want to join your cord together get all three sections and join them together with the shorter one in the middle that way they'll all be even after pressing fold the whole thing in half and sew all the way down leave a gap in the middle so we can turn it all back out best thing for turning out a nice long belt like this is a big ruler a meter rule is good if you don't have a meter rule any rule will do a belt and we have our loops and now we need to put the loops on the dress so this is the dress as it is now and we've got our little marks here down at the four inch and eight inch or 10 centimeter and 20 centimeter marks and your belt loops sit from the 20 centimeter or eight inch mark 10 centimeter or four inch mark now you've pinned your belt loops let's sew the dress we're going to sew from the hem up to this corner turn and then follow along to the bottom of the sleeve we're almost done before you finish the raw edge of this side and sleeve seam we've got a technical kimono sleeve at a right angle so what we need to do is put in you see them what are called stabilizing stitches they're about a half inch so as wide as my finger one centimeter just in this corner it's just a second row of stitching on top and or right next to the other side that is used so then when because this is at a right corner we clip in to the stitching like so just to the stitching don't want to clip the stitching what this does is releases the seam and lets it sit without the bulk in that corner and it can then that's only because it's at a right angle so it just lets it do this and now you can finish so you can serge overcast do whatever you want bind your seams to finish them but this will just let them sit a bit easier and we'll press this really well and we'll get right in and press like this so you're pressing it so it's nice and open and sits well this fabric is going to take this very well because it's cotton please say it's very malleable it's very movable but if you have anything stiffer than this as well you really do need one that stabilizing corner and then two the little clip just before you finish the raw edges and that will help this garment sit much better under the arm and not let it pull up into the shoulder so i'm going to go and press this really well finish the seams and then all we've got to do is hem and cuff and so you're just you're not doing seams now you're just doing closing the raw edges the neckline we're just double turning this with a really nice little turn quarter of an inch five mil sew that down and then turn it again and sew it again if you need to you might want to clip into the corners here just by like a millimeter so less than like a sixteenth of an inch you just want to clip so you're when you're sewing you can come around but honestly you don't need to it will get narrow there but that helps as we turn on the second time so turn this back by a quarter of an inch sew and then turn it back again and sew and then we've got a beautiful little neckline little tip i have this neckline is symmetrical so start and finish both passes with the machine at the same point that way you'll have some back stitching and that will tell you and now we hem oh that was fast there it is doesn't she look fantastic this was made with two meters of fabric so you can see it's made a little bit shorter perfect for a mini dress also as a top so it's absolutely fantastic in either way and it looks amazing look at these enormous sleeves and the kind of drape that you get especially with this cotton plissé that still springs like this look at that but it will always come back absolutely amazing this is a great little top and that took less than 30 minutes to make let's be honest it really was quick you're just up and across really and then you're closing some openings that's about it fantastic it looks great in the red doesn't it it really does and with that that almost ancient looking fabric because of this cotton plissé really has a Grecian vibe to it as well really easy little dress you can make it the pattern is in the description below you can have this ready in minutes and be out the door imagine this with a beautiful pair of jeans underneath it it would look fantastic so have a look for this another one that's similar is cheesecloth it's made a bit differently or double cheesecloth so two fabrics they're sort of pinned together or stab stitched together to make it it makes something quite cool really tunicky and has that great Grecian island holiday look to it so I hope you enjoyed watching I hope you make one yourself tell me what you've made yours out of I want to hear about the different fabrics you're using to make these garments because there's always different ideas whirling around people will use stuff that none of us will ever think of and then we've all got that in our back pocket that we can use next time we want to make something fantastic in just minutes I'm kimono alex this is house of kimono follow me for everything about kimono