Mad Men Sew-Along : Sewing the Bodice Muslin

I hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving. I know that I did. Now that it is over, I am excited to get going on our dresses again. Today we will put together out bodice pieces for our muslin.

The first thing that we need to do is sew the darts for our bodice pieces.

With right sides together, fold your darts along the lines that you transfered to your muslin piece. You should be able to see the lines faintly through the fabric.


Use your iron to press the crease in the middle of the dart.


Starting at the bottom edge of your bodice, stitch on top of the lines. You can backstitch at the bottom edge if you want but do not backstitch at the point of the dart. Instead, leave a long tail and tie a knot. This prevents a pucker at the tip of your dart.



Press the darts to the center.

Repeat with all darts for front and back bodice pieces.


Next we will sew together the bodice pieces:

With right sides together, pin the shoulder seams together of the front and back bodice pieces.


Change your sewing machine settings to a basting stitch (the longest stitch length on your machine). On my machine it means changing the stitch length from 2.5 to 5.


Without backstitching (since this is a muslin there is no reason to backstitch, plus this makes it easier to unpick to alter if necessary) sew the shoulder seams together.


Repeat for the sideseams.



Your bodice should look like this:

Tomorrow we will make alterations to the bodice and add the sleeves!