The flirty day dress class and Craftsy giveaway

My latest collaboration with Craftsy had me watching a class on how to sew up a particularly cute, vintage-inspired dress! The class is Sewing Vintage: The Flirty Day Dress with Laura Nash.

Laura Nash, by the way, is completely adorable.

If I wasn’t already enjoying the class, I was enjoying the fact that Laura changed outfits in all the segments. Seriously. You get to see her wearing the class dress and a variety of 50s and 60s-inspired outfits. She’s so cute she made me want to wear late 50s/early 60s styles and I haven’t really done that since high school.

The class is very detailed, as you’d expect from a class that walks you through sewing an entire dress. The pattern is Laura’s own Tia dress. Of course Laura covers the basics like fabric selection and picking a size, to cutting the pieces and straightening fabric grain, but she also walks you throught doing a full bust adjustment since the pattern is designed for a B cup. Which is great, since it’s not a one-piece bodice, so unless you’re very experienced doing FBAs you may not be sure where to start (I know I wouldn’t have known).

And Laura goes through every little detail you could possibly want to know in the construction, such as:

• sewing all the bodice pieces together
• adding the trim
• understitching
• finishing seams
• adding a waist stay
• adding a zipper underlay with a lapped zipper

I thought the zipper underlay was a nice touch. I do lapped zippers almost exclusively because I just prefer them, and some higher end garments (vintage and modern) have underlays to help the zipper not catch your skin or undergarments, and to keep everything nice and tidy. You can see the underlay in this photo from the class:

I don’t find an underlay really necessary for day dresses, but I totally appreciate that Laura shared this technique, and you can always apply it to something else, too! And with a lined bodice, zipper underlay and waist stay, this dress has a lot of nice touches. Plus as an added bonus, Laura walks you though how to sew a petticoat, too! Including how to use a ruffler foot.

One last thing I particularly liked was that Laura sewed throughout the entire class with her vintage sewing machine (which she takes some time to introduce the class to). Pretty much all of the other Craftsy classes I’ve watched have shown the instructors using pretty pricey modern machines. It was a nice change to see someone using a vintage machine. And no I’m not biased since I recently bought a vintage sewing machine, I watched the class before I bought her. Ha ha!

I started on the Tia dress but due to some tweaks I need to make in my bodice muslin that I didn’t have time or energy to work through at the time, I haven’t finished yet. However, my ultimate goal will be to sew a version without sleeves. I think it’ll be really cute, and I’m looking forward to getting back to it soon!

Enter the giveaway!

One lucky winner will get a FREE copy of Sewing Vintage: The Flirty Day Dress, thanks to Craftsy!

Here’s how to enter. It’s easy:

• If you’re new to Craftsy, register for a free Craftsy account OR
• If you’re already a Craftsy member, simply sign in and enter the giveaway

There’s one entry per person. The giveaway will close on Tuesday, July 29th at 1pm Central Time. Craftsy will randomly draw a winning entry and contact the winner. So get your entry in. Good luck!

(This is a sponsored post with Craftsy, however all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.)