Tutorial: Hemming a lined wedding dress with horsehair braid

I've altered my share of wedding dresses over the years that use horsehair braid in the hem, but have just finished my first wedding dress from scratch using it. I'm a convert. Horsehair braid, where have you been all my life? It gives a beautiful crisp finish to not only hems, but necklines too. (See Gertie's tutorial for adding horsehair braid to necklines. I followed it to put braid in the neckline of this same dress)

I only wish I had taken more notice of how the braid was sewn into the hems, and, you know, taken photos and stuff? I thought I remembered how they were done, but wasn't 100% sure, so turned to my friend Google to find an answer. Alas, the only instructions I could find either featured hand stitching the braid to the outer layer of the dress, or sewing the hem to the very edge of the braid (similar to how you would use ban-rol, without pulling it out), and either topstitching it down, or use handstitching at the top. Neither of these was the solution I was looking for.

Hemming Tutorial - The wonders of Ban-Rol

I first came across ban-rol a few weeks ago, when a member of the Stashbusting Facebook group was asking for opinions on hemming a shirt, and someone else posted a tutorial to sewing baby hems with ban-rol. Not that I had a need for it, but I started searching for some straight away. Local sewing shops had never even heard of it, so I switched to searching online. Even there I wasn't having any luck.

I was trying again one day to find an Australian supplier, and came across another tutorial for using ban-rol, when I happened upon a comment from an Australian saying that she was getting some in for her shop. That person was Helene from Stitch 56 in Melbourne, a company that I had not previously heard of, nor had it come up in any of my searches for ban-rol. Less than a week later, I had my ban-rol, and a client who needed 50 silk scarves hemmed! I bought 5 metres of the widest ban-rol available, 2 inches. In hindsight, I should have bought more. I mean, the postage cost me as much as the ban-rol did, and if I need more, I'll be up for even more postage!

Tutorial: Santa Sacks

The October theme for the Stashbusting sewalong was sewing for Christmas. I didn't quite manage to get anything Christmas related done during October, but I made up for it in November, by making my children some Santa Sacks. I also made one of my nieces one at the same time. I didn't take many pictures along the way, as I hadn't made up my mind until I was near the end that I would actually post a tutorial on how I did them. Don't worry though, it's pretty easy to do!

Tutorial: Inserting Strap Retainers in a Dress

Whilst making bridesmaid dresses recently, one of the girls during her toile fitting voiced some concern about the sleeves, and whether they might fall off her shoulder, or have her bra strap showing. To ease her concern, I suggesting putting strap retainers in the dresses.

The sleeves on these dresses are more or less a pleated rectangle sewn into a strapless dress, giving the look of a short cap sleeve, or a very wide strap, whichever way you choose to look at it.

Never having actually had anyone take me up on the offer of using them before, I googled strap retainers to see if I could use the shared wisdom of the internet to help me with the best way to put them in. Alas, I came up empty, so had to use my own brain to devise the best method.

Tutorial: Gathers

I recently came to the end of a couple of crazy months sewing dresses for other people. Sadly for my spring wardrobe (and winter for that matter), that meant there wasn't much time to do any sewing for myself! Amongst the eight outfits that I had on the go at once, were five identical bridesmaid dresses.

I don't know about you, but gathering is not my favourite sewing technique in the world. As I started writing this, I came across this tutorial on gathering with an overlocker, something I've never tried myself, so if you want to try that method, head on over and check it out. I'm planning on giving it a go in the not too distant future myself.

Here's how I did the gathers on all of my bridesmaid dresses. It's just your traditional sew two parallel lines and pull them up, but I thought I'd try something a little different when pinning the gathers down, and found that not only does I produce more even gathers, but it doesn't take as long.

Tutorial: Little Storage Drawers

I came across a box from an old phone recently, and thought it would make a nice addition to my storage for little bits and pieces in my studio. If I could find the other one. That wasn't too hard, and neither was putting them together to make a cute little set of drawers.