Sewing The Faraway Downs Dress

Hi Everyone! Welcome to Part Two of the Faraway Downs Dress Sew-Along! In this installment, Shari is joining us with a demonstration on the re-designed front placket. If you haven't chosen your fabrics yet, be sure to pop back over to Part 1, review the recommended fabrics and work to get your dress cut out and ready to sew.For those of you that are ready to get started, that's great! First you'll sew up the princess seams in both the Dress Fronts/Sides and Dress Backs/ Sides. You can review the earlier post about edgestitching/topstitching (in the Sewing With Purpose series) to see tips for sewing perfect edgestitched princess seams and then also edge stitch the front placket. I highly recommend using an edge stitch foot!OK, here's Shari...The Faraway Downs Dress is one of Cinnamon’s original patterns and it has remained a customer favorite for fifteen years – has is really been that long?! We did a thorough review of this pattern and decided this delightful design deserved a complete refresh. The main thing Cinnamon wanted to rework in this pattern was the front placket. She had originally designed it to be made using muslin fabric without a right or wrong side (fabrics that look the same on the front and back). It seemed logical design choice at the time, but it limited the fabrics that could be used to make it. After discussing the issue we came up with a new design that works with fabrics that have a right and wrong side, so now just about any medium weight woven fabric can be used, which greatly expands the design capabilities!The finished look of the dress is exactly the same, the change was just in how we managed the lining. Instead of having a separate lining at the front and back openings, we cut these sections in a single piece so that the new placket could be folded over from the lining section with the right side of the fabric facing out. If my description sounds a bit confusing, watch the video tutorial I made, it looks a lot easier to do than it sounds. It is funny how you can completely change the construction of a garment and end up with the same design in the end.And now, Cinnamon's back with a quick look at choosing the right buttons or brads for the front of the dress! Looking for fabrics and notions? Find all the info in this post: Faraway Downs Dress Sew-Along Overview.Find those tiny brads at WAWAK. Flat Prong Rivets 6mm Now that your placket is sewn you can continue with the pattern instructions. Next week we'll be taking a closer look at sewing the tiny sleeves and even tinier sleeve hem ruffles. Coming Up in week 4...Shari - "One of my favorite things about this dress are the delightful layers and layers of ruffles. As much as I like the look of them, I don’t particularly enjoy gathering them up. A while back, Donna from our team here at Pixie Faire team sent me a ruffler foot to try on my sewing machine. I have a tendency to be leery of new gadgets, and this foot looks rather complicated, but I am curious to see how it works. The ruffles on this Faraway Downs dress seem to be just the thing to experiment on, so I’ll let you know how it goes in my next video!"

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