How to Cut Out a Girl's Peasant Dress
Cutting cloth is a precise art, especially when you're making clothing. You can always rip and re-seam a finished dress, but once textile has been apportioned, you're stuck with the result. An inch here. A cut there. Before you know it, the fabric you adore is unsalvagable and your only option for completing a project is to start from scratch. Given the importance of this step, take your time when you put shears to pattern and fabric and the completed girl's peasant dress will fit exactly as it should.
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Things You'll Need
- Pattern
- Fabric
- Pinking shears
- Dressmaker shears
- Scissor sharpening tool/steel wool pads
- Pins
- Smooth worktable
Instructions
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Choose a girl's peasant dress pattern that offers the simplest instructional guidelines based on the complexity of the garment you want make and your skill level. Check out the "easy to make" sections of popular pattern brands to find exactly the style you're looking for.
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Turn to the Internet for girl's peasant dress patterns if the books at your local fabric store prove a dead end. Visit sites like Alley Cat Scratch and Renaissance Faire pattern sources to find peasant dress ideas. Or follow a nightgown pattern to make girl's peasant dress.
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Choose a fabric that's easy to work with for your girl's peasant dress. Eschew filmy, diaphanous textiles that fray easily when cut and also present slipping and sliding problems while being worked on the platen of a sewing machine. Likewise, avoid thick textiles. You could find yourself unable to fit two sections of a fabric like brocade under the foot of your sewing machine when attempting to seam several thicknesses together.
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Set up your iron and ironing board. Press the girl's peasant dress fabric you've purchased to remove all wrinkles and folds the material acquired on the bolt. Lower the iron's temperature and press all of the pattern pieces, too, as this small step will assure you of the most precise and accurate cut lines.
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Pin each pattern section to the fabric you've chosen for your girl's peasant dress following layout recommendations. Avoid doing the job atop a work area that isn't smooth and hard as it's almost impossible to capture edges accurately when your material sections are being cut on padded or textured surfaces.
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Take a knife stone or scissors sharpener to your regular or pinking shears so the edge of your cuts are precise. Or sharpen your scissors by running a clean steel wool pad over the blades vigorously.
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Use pinking shears to cut sections of your girl's peasant dress. Check edges of cloth sections for frays and to make certain you followed each pattern piece's cut lines. Remove the pins. Set up your machine to complete your sewing project once you're confident that you've done a perfect job of cutting out each section of the dress.
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References
- Photo Credit scissors image by timur1970 from Fotolia.com
