Sewing an Infinity Dress | DIY Bridesmaids Dress (EASY)

Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. My name is April and if you're new here, I make DIY fashion and sewing tutorials every week. So don't forget to hit that subscribe button and the notifications bell so you never miss out on a new video. Today, I'm gonna show you how to make this infinity dress that I'm wearing right here. These are super popular for bridesmaids because they can be tied and worn in many different ways and they look great on every body shape. Before we get started, I wanted to say thank you to HelloFresh for sponsoring today's video. If you guys don't know what HelloFresh is, they are a meal kit delivery service and they deliver pre-measured ingredients with step-by-step recipes to your door starting from only $5.66 per serving. Make sure you stay tuned till the end to see what meal we ended up cooking for dinner and let's get started. All right, let's talk fabric. I bought four yards of this beautiful spandex fabric. I think four yards would be a good amount for some of you but depending on your height and size, you may need more fabric. If you're making a bridesmaid or formal dress, I recommend choosing a fabric with some shine to it. For a more casual infinity dress, you could use a jersey knit fabric and it'll work as well. Your fabric should stretch in all directions because the infinity straps need to wrap around your body in many ways. And before buying your fabric, lay it against your body to see how nice it drapes. Another important thing is that your fabric should be double-sided or at least the same color on both sides. Mine has some shine on one side and is matte on the other. I couldn't find any nice fabric to work with from my local sewing store so I went to the LA Fabric District to purchase it and it cost me $30 for four yards. I'm going to be cutting it on the floor since this won't fit on my cutting table. And the first thing I do is fold the fabric enough so that the length from the corner is enough for the length of my skirt. Once I folded it enough and smoothed out all the bumps, I grab my pattern-making book to reference the circle skirt chart. I have a website now where I can post blogs and I will post up a photo of the circle skirt chart for you to reference. On the circle skirt chart, you wanna move over to the half circle skirt column and then find your waist measurement. Then take that measurement and mark it out starting from one of the folded corners. I recommend you add more seam allowance than you need to before cutting the corner out because the fabric is super stretchy. After cutting out the corner, decide how long you want your dress to be and mark out the length starting at the new curve you just cut. Make sure you're using very sharp scissors to cut clean edges because you won't need to hem this fabric. And also be sure to remove the selvage edge from the skirt. With the rest of the fabric, I still have four yards untouched across the bottom, which is what I'll be using to create the infinity straps. Evenly fold the fabric in half again. Then from the straight edge, but not including the selvage, I measured nine inches up all the way across. This is how wide my straps will be, which I feel like would be a good size for many of you as well. But as always, measure and test out the design on yourself first before cutting out the actual fabric. Cut the nine inch wide strip out and remove the selvage edge. Then cut the strip in half. Now we can sew everything together. Face the skirt right sides together. For me, I want the shiny side of the fabric to be seen on the outside of the dress. And pin the open side down so that the two layers stay lined up and sew the open side closed. When sewing on stretch fabric, make sure to switch your needle to a ballpoint needle. Trust me, this will save your fabric if you mess up and need to seam rip. If you use a regular sewing needle, it will tear and create holes in your fabric. I actually had to seam rip right after this and the fabric was still in perfect condition because I used a ballpoint needle. You also want to be sewing with a stretch stitch so no seams pop while the fabric stretches. After the skirt seam is sewn, that seam will be the center back of the dress. To find the center front, just fold the skirt in half at the seam and mark the center front. Next, take one of the long straps and overlap it at the center front by two inches. Then lay the second strap on top and overlap it as well on the other side by two inches. This will create a crossover bodice look. Make sure they are evenly overlapped at the center front and then sew all the layers together at the waist. To finish off the back of the dress, I just folded the raw edge over at the waist and hemmed it with a stretch stitch. Here is the final dress. Here are just a few different ways you can tie this dress. There's a bunch of videos and photos online sharing more cool ways you can wear it so really there's a style for everyone. You really don't have to hem the bottom of the skirt or do I recommend you hem the edges of the long straps because leaving it unhemmed will allow for a more seamless look when you wrap the straps in different ways. You can twist the straps to be skinnier and you can decide if you want the waistline to sit higher or lower. I just love how simple and quick this dress was to make. It only took me about 30 minutes which is the same amount of time that it took for us to cook our HelloFresh meal. I don't know about you guys but we suck at figuring out what to cook for dinner so we love when HelloFresh shows up at the door. They have a variety of recipes from family meals, calorie smart, and vegetarian. You can also change up your delivery days or skip a week whenever you need to which is what I do when I go on vacation. Get started with eight free meals that's $80 off your first month of HelloFresh. Visit hellofresh.com and use my code COOLERBUT80. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I'll see you next time. Bye.