Cherry Blossom Dress Sewalong Stage 6: Sewing Shoulder Seams and Side Seams

Welcome to stage 6 of the Cherry Blossom Dress Sewalong!

By the end of today, you’ll have something that actually looks like a dress that you might be able to wear!

At this stage, it’s vitally important that you check the fit, so make sure you try the dress on, and don’t trim the seams until you’re sure.

Before You Start

You’ll need the dress pieces you made in the previous stage, and:
Scissors
Sewing machine
Pins.
If you have some safety pins, you could use these instead of pins for the side seams so that you don’t get poked or scratched while trying it on.

Sewing the Shoulders and the Side Seams

With the right sides together, pin the shoulder seams.

Now pop the dress on over your head and pin the sides at the waist. Make sure that the waist/ bodice seam is lined up.

At this point, you might need to adjust the shoulder seams so that the neckline and the darts are where you want them to be.

Then pin the side seams on both sides of the bodice. This is where you might like to use safety pins if you have some! Don’t bother with the skirt, as this is going to be loose and swirly anyway.

Carefully check that the side seams that you have pinned are about the same size.

On one side, mark where you have pinned with a pencil or a fabric pen. Unpin the side seam on one side, take the dress off and repin the seam.

Now sew the shoulders and the side seams.

To ensure that the side seams are neat and that the waistline on the front and back of the dress still match up, I’d start at the waist and sew upwards towards the armpit. Then to sew the skirt section, start at the waist again and sew down the sides of the skirt.

Obviously at this point, you’re going to have some issues getting the dress on and off as you’ve sewn up both sides!

But don’t worry! This is all part of the plan to make sewing in the zip as easy as possible. We’ll be doing that next :).