DIY Kimono Dress - Full Tutorial - Easiest Dress You Will Ever Make - Beginner Friendly

You can have a dress in 30 minutes that looks just like this. Grab the pattern in the description, come along, I'm going to show you how we make it, the different variations you can use to enhance your dress, but also just how quick it is, how fun it is, and how easy it is to make something this chic in half an hour. Let's have a look. So this is the dress that I made. It's made out of calico. That is the fabric you use to sample things. It's basic cotton, very basic cotton. And I used it to try out the pattern and it's actually quite lovely. So I've got black calico, usually calico is a sort of off-white. You wouldn't call it beige, it's off-white and you can get it in white as well. I've done it in black and it looks so chic. And I've got to say, this medium weight cotton looks fantastic with this dress. It gives it some real structure at the blouse part of the bodice here and holds these sleeves out really well. So it's actually a very inexpensive way to make this dress. Go and buy some calico, it's some of the cheapest cotton you'll find and you can make something really wonderful. Let's have a look at the dress. So it is a T-shaped dress. In fact, you can see how I've made this from the kimono and how it's related to the kimono. Because if I stand like this, we're making this and it's got a belt as well. So let's see if I can hold both the sleeves up at once. You can see this is when I first started to trial it and was going through making the pattern in my head and then trying to get it down and I just made a little mini one. I always do that first to see how it works and see if the mechanics of it work in quarter scale and then I move up to make actual bigger ones. So can you see if I move that way, you can see we've got a T-shape and then underneath we've got a belt which is attached with belt loops and then this belt pulls the dress up onto the waist. The bodice of the dress blouses, this is called blousing, when you sort of gather underneath and it falls like a blouse down over the belt. The belt's then revealed with a beautiful bow over on one side with the tails of this belt coming out and then the skirt, because we've bloused it here and gathered around the waist, the skirt has an asymmetrical, I'm going to pull it back here, an asymmetrical gather over on this side. So it really is a dynamic and chic dress that you can make in half an hour. For this I used 2.4 meters of fabric or 2.6 yards and it makes a dress that comes to, this would be about the knee on an average height woman, so say the people in my family, their shoulders come up to here and that would fall to their knee. It's 100 centimeters or 39 inches to the hem here once you've pulled it up. I'll take off the belt, we can have a look at how it actually works. So it is called the 30 minute kimono dress and you'll see why. I've untied the belt and you can really see the kimono shape there. Do you see that T shape? In garment construction, technically this is called a kimono sleeve because it's inset rather than set in and the difference between that is set in means that it's sewn, there's a seam between the sleeve and the bodice and here it's inset, there's no seam, it's part of the bodice. This is all one thing and it's all one thing all the way down and then right down here underneath where the sleeve meets the side seam, we have belt loops down here and they're a good 4 inches or 10 centimeters from where this corner is and through that we put a sash or a belt and the dress works like this, you grab the belt, you pull the belt up to your waist and you tie a bow, you pull the belt loops back a bit and then you blast the bodice like so and you've got a really chic little dress that took you 30 minutes to make. It used two and a half meters of fabric and you've made something really quite cool. It's stunning in black, in miniature, in real form, it looks so good in black and right now I'm going to sew it using more black. So here is some fabric that I have, I have a lot of it and I won't need to use all of this. It is 150 centimeters wide so it's 60 inches wide. Do you see that? That's my arm span there. So it's wider fabric, a lot of fabrics come in 110 centimeters, around about that's around 43 inches and in the pattern I have the way of cutting that. And in the next video I'll be showing you how to do that. So if you've got narrow fabric you can move on to the next video but I'll show you the wider fabric now, this is beautiful. This is 150 centimeters wide, it is sandwashed satin. So satin is a weave which means that you have that, oh look at that, that mercurial sheen over the top. This is a visco-satin so it's made out of a man-made fiber but it's got the satin weave which is really beautiful and then it's sandwashed which is a process that is applied to the fabric once it's woven which gives the satin a little bit of a matte texture in a way. So it's literally, if you think about sort of sand washing or sewing washing, what you're doing is you're abrading the very top layer just to give that, take a little bit off the sheen and give it a bit more personality I suppose you could say. But it's absolutely wonderful and it's quite heavy so it drapes like you can see, look just in my hands how beautiful this is, the way that it sits when you hold it. It's going to be quite different to this. So this is the plain cotton and it is absolutely fantastic for this dress. A linen will do the same thing as well. If you get a linen around 180 gsm which is grams per square meter, if you get a nice mid-weight linen or a cotton it's going to do this. So you can see it's got a little bit of structure, it holds. A taffeta or a dupion silk will be a little bit more structured so the sleeves will come out a bit more and this will come out. So it's up to you what fabric you want to use. I'm doing this so you can see what they do. So I've got a really drapey satin there. It's almost like a duchess satin if you think of bridal silks. It's like that but it's in black and that's going to show you how this really can can fall and make something mercurial and beautiful and that hangs off the body. I'm also going to make it in a nice stiff taffeta to show you what you can do with something really beautiful and crunchy and nice silk and make it stand up and stand out and make a real evening wear outfit with this. So this is it. It's really simple. Grab the pattern. Come along and sew it with me. All the links are in the description. You can find the pattern easily and get started. You can have a dress in 30 minutes. So if you've got plans tonight you can have a new dress for that right now. Let's get started. You will see the sizing sheet in the pattern. I'm going to make one for a medium. So I'm going to make a rectangle that is 2.4 meters or 2.6 yards by 130 centimeters or 151 inches. So I'm going to cut that big rectangle out and then I'll show you how we start to cut it. So I've got my fabric here. It is 130 centimeters or 53 inches across and it is 2.4 meters or 2.6 yards. So just so we have a look right now. That makes the dress that then picks up and will fall to about the knee. If you want to make it longer you can. You measure from your shoulder like this. Put the end at your shoulder and then raise it so you can see where the tip of the measuring tape is going. And when you're happy hold on to the tape from your shoulder and find that. So say if I wanted it to fall to 120 centimeters which is about four feet. You would do it that way. And then what you're doing is you're adding, you're doubling that because this goes all the way over the back. So we measure from the shoulder to find how long we want the dress. But then we have to double it and add two hems because it's all one big piece of fabric like that. So that's how you extend it if you want to make it bigger. If you wanted to make it around floor or sort of midi length sort of just to your ankles you would cut a piece of fabric that's three meters long or 3.2 yards. And that's going to make something that once it's been the belt has been pulled up it will fall down to about your ankles. So just a bit longer. If you're making something that you want a bit more sort of evening wear oriented that would be a perfect length for most people to do because it might feel really long when you make the tunic. But remember we pull the tunic up and then it blouses here. So you have to arrange for that extra fabric to go up and under and then blouse here at the bodice. The first thing we do is we fold this in half and then half again. So get your longest side 2.6 yards or 2.4 meters and fold along that. So you've got your shorter side here and the longer side here and then we fold that again but the other way. So we're now folding the shorter side along. So what you end up with is a square. Imagine a napkin or something that you fold into quarters. That's exactly what you're doing here. And get it all even. So bring all your corners together down in one corner like that and give it a give it a shake. This is quite a loose fitting garment so if things are a little bit off it's okay. It's a very laissez-faire pattern to make. It's very quick. It's very easy. So you don't have to worry a lot about this. Now I'm going to give that a good press so I know where this corner is and then I'll come back and cut out a neck hole. All right so I've given that a press just up in the corner so it's nice and sharp and I know that it's all going to be even up there. And then what I'm going to do is cut the neckline. Now in the pattern which you can obviously get down below there is a printable template for this. If you print it out on A4 paper it will be life-size so you can do it but it's extremely easy to just do this yourself. We're measuring from this top corner. So I'll just show you the top corner again so you know. From this top corner if you go straight along you've got two folds up here and then all the four corners there's no folds down the other and that's your opposite corner. So we're working up in the one in the very top corner of this where the four folds come from and we make sure that's all lovely and even. You measure down the back. This is your back and this is your shoulder. I'm going to come down the back for five centimetres which is two inches and then along the top for 12.5 centimetres which is five inches. Very easy. Now if you want you can make another little mark down here because we're on the wrong side of the fabric and from the 12.5 centimetre or five inch mark you mark down for the five centimetres or two inches again to make a little rectangle. That way you can make a box and this makes creating this curve a lot easier. Now I can do it by eye without the box. You might not be able to and that's fine. You can draw the box and then get something circular like the top of a mug and you line it up so you can make that curve. What we're creating here is the neckline. So we're just cutting out this which is a big boat neck. You see that shape there? It's just a big boat neck. It's in the pattern as well. So what we want is a curve that starts nice and flat at this centre back line which is the five centimetres or two inches and then curves up to the point where it meets the five inch or 12.5 centimetre point and you just cut that out and this is your neckline. You should have a piece that looks like this and then when you unfold it, it's a little oval and that is your neckline there that you've just cut out. You can see here that this is plain cotton and the neckline is actually now stretched about a centimetre since I cut this. So this is freshly cut. It's not stretched at all and the whole neckline does tend to stretch because all of this is off grain which means that it's not on the straight and it's not on the cross. It's just off which means that it stretches more. That's what fabric does when it's off grain. So it will stretch a little bit. If you have stretched fabric, you might want to use your selvedge and you run the selvedge, you cut a little strip of selvedge and you sew it all the way around the neckline and because that is on the straight of grain, it will keep it nice and stabilised and won't make it stretch too much. So consider that when you've done this and if you're doing that, do it now, do it nice and quickly or maybe after the next step but you want to stabilise that neckline pretty fast if you have a stretchy fabric so it doesn't stretch out too much because otherwise it will stretch and might go beyond the shoulders. But otherwise it will make a beautiful neckline. If you have a nice sturdy fabric, this is a satin with no stretch in it, this is a cotton and it's gone about a centimetre which makes a really graceful neckline. In fact, look at the back where it really hangs down there. Like the way a kimono scoops down at the back there. It's absolutely beautiful. So you want to do a little bit of stretching but not too much and the selvedge is a great way of doing that. If you don't have selvedge or your selvedge is really stretchy, then just use some either seam tape which is just a really thin ribbon or just a strip, a narrow strip of plain fabric like plain cotton like this and it will stabilise that seam and stop it from stretching too much. That is the neckline cut. So now we're cutting out the body which is this. If you see there's a big chunk down there, how we make the T-shape. I'm going to start along here from the neckline. So here's my neckline there. I'm going to come all the way along and at this point there's two folds, two loops there where the two folds are. If it doesn't look like that, you are in the wrong place. So have a look at your fabric. Come to your neckline and straight across. The fabric is still folded into four so we're cutting through all four layers at once. Makes it really simple and fast if you do it this way. Come along, I find 50 centimetres. 50 centimetres is 20 inches by the way and then from that point, we've just got down 20 inches or 50 centimetres from the top of the fabric. There's your neckline. We come to the other side and down 50 centimetres and then we go in 30 centimetres. So I've squared that off at the top here. I measured 50 centimetres or 20 inches down and then 30 centimetres or 12 inches across. The top here and I've found 30 centimetres or 12 inches in here in the middle just by squaring it and then do a couple more marks all the way down to the end of the fabric so you can make a nice confident straight line down here and know that you've got a good square that you're working on. We've made that square. That is this cut out and it's on both sides because we're cutting through all four layers so I'll cut through that right now. So we've cut that and now you have four rectangles. They're 12 inches and about 26 and a half, 26 inches long or 30 centimetres by 70 centimetres. These are used for all the extra bits. This is now your dress. We're going to sew that together and that is pretty much a dress already. It makes the tunic and these are what turns it into a beautiful chic dress. So from these we're going to take our belt loops and we're going to make a sash and you can do that from just one of them. So we cut this into thirds and that's all included in the pattern how to do that but this is where you can get creative. So in the pattern I've got a template for a pocket bag. I've also got a way to put on just a patch pocket. You can put a patch pocket right there or up here or anywhere you want. You can make Peter Pan collars. You can make really big sashes. It's all there and you can use it now to make anything. In fact even at the end I've got a little bit where you sew some together and you make a gathered skirt hem for it so it really has a flouncy down the bottom. I won't do that with this. I'm going to make it the way the pattern says but just so you know that these are now up for grabs. You can use them however you want or put them aside. They're fantastic big squares of fabric that you can then use for other patterns and that will be really useful because they're lovely big squares. So I'm going to put them to the side. I'm going to keep one to cut into thirds. Let's have a look at what we made though. So I've just cut into here and I'm going to hold it up and you'll see this in the pattern. This shape over and over again. Do you see that? So that is half the pattern and then if I open it up like this that is your tunic tea dress and it is that simple that all we do is we sew up one side and under the arm and we sew up the other. Then we hem, we cuff and we do the neckline. That's the dress. We're going to put in some belt loops in the sash as well. So it really is quite quick once you get going. So first thing we do, we take one of these rectangles. We know that it is 12 inches or 30 centimetres across and I'm just going to measure that into thirds which is 10 centimetres or 4 inches. So I have three strips like this. Get one of the strips and then I'm going to take 4 inches or 10 centimetres off the bottom of it. Now this little patch, you fold it in half and you should end up with two 2 inch strips like that. So two 2 inch strips and they become your belt loops and it's important to know I'm going to put a big X on the wrong side of this one because this is now shorter than the other two pieces that you took and the best practice for that is to make this when you're creating your sash, put the shorter one in the middle and that way your sash will be nice and even the whole way around. And of course if you want to make your sash longer, use another rectangle from in there and you can make bigger sashes and wider sashes using the other three rectangles. You've got a lot of fabric to play with but if you want to make it really fast, this is the quickest way to do it. That is cutting done. So you should have two little pieces to make belt loops with. You should have three pieces like this, three strips to make a sash with and then you should have your dress. And now we get to sewing. The first thing I'm sewing is the belt loops and that is as easy as turning those little strips right side together and putting a 1 centimeter or half inch seam allowance all the way down and turn them out. Give them a press and put them to the side. Next I do the sash. So I first put right sides together and join the three strips so they become one big long strip and then I turn the sash right sides together. I start in one corner at the short end and come down to the corner. Then I sew all the way along to about the middle of the sash. I stop for 10 centimeters or 4 inches and then I start again and continue on down to the next corner and up the other short side. Then I'll clip in the corners and then turn the whole sash out and you can use a meter rule here to turn the sash out. It makes it much easier. Once that's turned out I give it a really good press so it's nice and flat and then come back and use an edge stitch to sew up that hole in the middle. Now the placement of your belt loops is rather important. That's going to give you the lift that makes the garment blouse down like this and you need a good 8 inches to do so. This is your neckline then this is your sleeve and that is the body and this is the corner from which we cut out the big chunk and we made the sash and everything. Now come down from this corner 10 centimeters so 4 inches and put in a mark and then do it again 10 centimeters 4 inches so you have 2 marks there and this is where we're going to put our belt loops. So transfer those marks all the way through and for that I just tend to lift it all up like this, hold it there where I put the mark and put another one. So if I open this up you can see the T shape there. There you go sleeves, body, sides and then I've got my marks there's 4 inches 10 centimeters down and another and that's what's going to lift this up and create that beautiful blousing effect. This is where now if you have a pocket bag you're marking down how far it says in your pattern and you're applying your pocket bags for the inseam pockets before we do this. If you've got a patch pocket you might want to apply that to the outside of the garment now while you can really get into it and put a big patch pocket on the right side of the fabric before there's too many seams and stuff going on. But I'm just going to put the belt loops in and then sew up the seams, do the neckline, the hems and the cuffs and we're done. And what we do is we lift up so I've got two layers the front and the back and your belt loops are going to go in. You can make more marks here as well if you want to if you want you can use your marks that you've already got to mark the right side of the fabric. You're going to put your belt loop in here and do it at about a 45 degree angle so it's shooting off into the dress there as it goes in and then you want it to do the same but on the way back so it curves. Do you see this? See how it's curving there? So I'm going to pass across here with a seam and catch that belt loop in the seam and then it's going to leave the seam so it can then catch the sash and then come back into the And you're applying this to the right side the inside of the garment like so. Key is to get it to curve a little bit and then to make sure that you're even on both sides so you see there it's going to come up there the seam allowance is going to go along here and catch a bit of the belt loop but not all of it let it free and then keep going. Now you can actually tack these down, sew them down first so you don't have the pins in there it's a great idea so then when you come in and do the side seam you just whip straight up. So your belt loops are in place and now it's time to sew the seams so literally come up the side and along the sleeve here. After we've done that and you clip right into the corner and I'll show you when I do that just so we can ease this junction underneath here and so it doesn't gather too much and pull up to the neckline but that's just about a technical kimono sleeve so in garment construction that's what this type of sleeve is called and you just need to ease the corners by clipping in. Very common practice to do it and it really does make a big difference if you do that then you can overlock your seams and we move on to cuffing neckline and hemming. So you come up to this corner here so this is your sleeve this is the body and what we're going to do is clip right in so you can see where your stitches are there so you see here come right down just before the corner where we turn the stitching there. Now if you want you can put a few stabilising stitches just for half an inch or a centimetre either side nice straight ones right next to the stitching and this will keep this nice and nice and neat and then obviously when you surge and overlock then this all gets neatened up but it's nice to separate that now and that where you can see right here the ease that that gives you before that was like this a really hard corner and a turn but now you've got something that opens all by itself. Now that you've done your side seams your dress is getting very close to done all we're doing now is finishing the openings is a great way to think about it. So the first one as well that I want to do is the neckline this can stretch and is a delicate part of the garment so I like to get that done nice and quickly the key is to not stress the fabric as it's going through the machine and you'll be fine. We're turning it back and if you really want up in the tight corners you can clip in just a couple of millimetres like less than an eighth of an inch to help you get around that corner but it's okay if we only just catch it through a few threads on this first pass. I talk about that in the pattern what we're doing is holding it down so then we can turn it again we're doing a really narrow hem turn around the neckline just by a quarter of an inch or five millimetres and then five millimetres again. Another great use for one of those extra pieces that we took from under the arms is you can make a facing for your neckline you just trace your neckline and make it about two inches wider cut a nice big facing piece and then you attach that right sides together and if you want you can put a couple of stitches along the shoulder to hold it down and that will create a nice a more stable neckline again if you're playing with with stretch fabrics or something like that it can really help to have a facing in there and that's easy as just tracing around your neckline with a two inch offset. Right last thing to do is cuff and hem the garment so I've gone and pressed a one centimetre and then a four centimetre press in there which is half an inch and then one and three quarter inches and now I'm going to edge stitch all the way along so make sure all my pressing is nice and neat and then just follow that edge all the way along to make a lovely cuff and the hem is done exactly the same way which makes it just as easy and there we have it beautiful black satin 30 minute kimono dress so you can see here it's a lovely big t-shaped garment with a couple of belt loops and I'm going to put it on the mannequin now and show you how it's worn because as quick as it is to make it's as easy to then dress so you throw it over the shoulders so there it is it's actually quite beautiful just as is like without the belt loops if you if you wanted to go for something like that you have a big beautiful necklace or something it's a fantastic dress just by itself and the belt loops aren't too apparent so they're not going to distract too much from the dress and then but that is what makes this is when you do add the belt loops it's amazing in the satin you can already see there's a difference from the cotton that I used earlier and this is the same cotton by the way on the tiny little one so that's much more structural because it's so much smaller but I'm going to put the sash through the belt loops here on either side and then you see yeah there we go so I basically I grab the belt loops and I pull them up to the waist to a nice small part so it can be the empire if you want to go shorter can be down on the hips but the waist is the best part the natural waist and then I just tie it and I tie it off to the side so down the princess line if you like that's that's just a personal preference because I think the asymmetry is what makes this so chic rather than having it perfectly symmetrical down the center but if that's what you like of course you can do it that way that's it's your dress you've made something wonderful so enjoy it you see I've got a lovely little bow there let the tails fall down nicely and then it's just about finessing the gathers so you can finesse them however you however you see fit but if you just pull them up you sort of hoik it all up nice and straight and then let it fall it will it will create a really nice silhouette and a really nice drape as well this is incredible actually it's far far more uh I keep using the term mercurial because it's it's very apt but it's far more liquid because of this this sandwashed satin I'm going to come in with the with the camera and get a bit better close-up but I want to see this I'm seeing this for the first time now as well and you can see here you're just finessing your the folds to make them sit nicely I like them and in the drawings in the pattern as well I have and on all the ones that I've done have the sort of gathers I bring them across like this and they're held by the bow so the bow comes out like the tails there but so do the so do the drape so do the folds and the gathers they fold down this side so so the eye is looking at the tails of the bow and the little the loops of the bow just poking out there and then seeing all the drape down this side that's very chic it's very nice so I turn it around that is wonderful isn't that beautiful real I say mid-century and it is mid-century but it's also very early 20th century that 1920s 20s line especially from the back I think that's that is something rather stunning and the big key about this is the technical kimono sleeve so it's not a Japanese kimono sleeve it's a technical kimono sleeve because there's no seam between it and the bodice but look at these you have some silver jewelry with this just to to pick up that to let the the glint of the satin follow down onto your wrist it's just stunning isn't that wonderful and back around to the front so that floaty material sorry about the creaking of the mannequin but I want to make this move and show you how lovely it is it's just wonderful isn't it beautiful I'll get the camera and we'll come in and have a closer look so here is the satin yeah you can really see it now see the difference of the satin say compared to the other dress which I've got just here very matte this is just calico you can see that hard wearing basic basic cotton it's still made an absolutely beautiful dress but this is about elevation and so is the pattern you can make this in half an hour that's great then it's about elevating it with textiles but also the extras putting pockets or adding your own spin to it adding a flounce around the hem or bringing it all the way to the floor all very simple things that you can do and seeing as it didn't take that long to make the dress you may have time to do those things with it but if not you've got a dress you're going out you're all done and it's looking fantastic and you still have time for a swift drink before you head out so there we go all beautiful all done it's looking fantastic it's a 30 minute dress you can make this the pattern is in the description go along and grab it come and watch the video again see the little bits that you need a little bit of help with but make this and be out on the town in your new dress tonight it's absolutely fantastic there's so many things you can then do with it once you've started playing with the pattern as well this is amazing for beginners it's all straight seams there's a little bit of neckline work here but that's very easy and you can see in the video that it's just a double turn it really is a really simple pattern but makes something quite spectacular in such a little time with just big straight seams that is the magic of it and it's the magic of kimono that that's where this comes from it's all from the kimono and from that early 20th century obsession with everything japanese i hope you enjoyed it i hope you grab the pattern and make one yourself please tell me if you do show me pictures of it i want to see what you've done what fabrics you use everyone who's writing to me is using different fabrics to make their garments and it's really exciting to see things that i've never even thought of i hope you enjoyed that i really did i thought it was so much fun making it and i'm so excited to see this in the satin as well i hope you make something wonderful thank you so much