How to Sew an EASY Beginners Baby & Girls Twirl Dress on a Sewing Machine (+ a PDF Sewing Pattern!)

Today I'm going to show you how to sew the essential tie back twirl dress. This is my favorite thing to sew for little girls. Here is my little one in hers and it is the perfect little twirl dress and it is a really fun sew. The printable pattern pieces for this project come for babies all the way to girls size 10 and the link below in the description box will bring you to those printable pattern pieces. We're going to sew this dress using any kind of knit fabric that you want to. It makes it super soft and I like to use raspberry creek fabrics because they ship really fast and they're affordable. So when you pull the fabric from left to right like I'm doing here, you want to make sure there's some stretch to it. These are the two circle skirt pattern pieces that I have cut out. When you open it up you can see they're two half circles. You cut it right on the fold of the fabric and don't forget you can go to alohasewingcompany.com to get this printable pattern piece or just click the link below in the description box. Here are my bodice pieces, the front bodice, the back bodice pieces, the ties, and the sleeves. The white fabric is for the lining of my dress. I got these from raspberrycreekfabrics.com. So here is what's going to show on the outside of my dress, the wails and the waves, and these two pieces are for the ties that we're going to make for the back. And I'm going to show you how to do that first really quickly. Now with knit fabrics it's not the same as cotton so when you iron on some knits it doesn't really stay. So you can use the iron to make these ties or you can just fold and use some clips to hold it in place. So on one end of the fabric go ahead and fold it inwards like I just did about a half an inch and then you're going to fold the fabric in half with the wrong sides together and either crease it or use your iron so that you have a nice center crease going down your your fabric piece. Then you're going to get the bottom edge of your fabric and fold it upwards right to that creased line. Now you can see here that when I am ironing a knit fabric it doesn't necessarily like to show but there are some knit fabrics that will work well with the iron so I still wanted to show it but I just normally use clips to hold it in place. After you have done this side you're going to fold the other side down to that middle crease as well and make sure that you hold that in place with your iron or with some clips. Now we are going to fold this in half so that we meet the two folded edges and this is going to create our tie. Now we're going to bring it to the sewing machine and we're going to sew a straight line all the way down so that we can close those two folded edges together. You want to stay kind of close to the edge of the fabric using about a one-eighth of an inch seam allowance. Do the same exact thing for both of your ties and if you want to skip this step of making your own ties just use ribbon. A three-eighths of an inch works best but if you're making it for bigger girls use about a half inch just cut it to the size of your pattern piece. Now starting at the folded end of your tie go ahead and press it underneath your walking foot and then sew right close to the edge going all the way down your fabric. The most important thing I can tell you when you're sewing with a knit fabric is do not stretch that fabric as you sew. If you do that your fabric will curl up so you want to make sure you're not stretching the fabric you're letting the machine pull it as it sews. So here is both of my ties all sewn you can see I stayed right close to the edge to close those two folded sides together. Done with the ties now let's work on the bodice. This is the outer dress for me so I'm going to flip my two back pieces over and I'm going to lay them with the right sides together so that the armholes match up where they're supposed to. Line your front and back together right at the shoulder seams because right now we're just going to sew those shoulder seams together. You're going to use a three-eighths of an inch seam allowance for this entire project unless I tell you otherwise. You can use your sewing machine or your serger to create most of this dress. I'm using my serger for most of it because I like the finished seams to be nice and it's just easier for me. If you're using your sewing machine you can just use a straight stitch on this part. For the rest of the project you're going to use a zigzag stitch or your machine's stretch stitch because both of those will allow that knit fabric to still stretch how we want it to stretch in the areas that we need it to stretch at. So now I have done the same thing with the bodice, the inside of my bodice, and the outside just matching up the shoulder seams with the right side together. Now we're going to go back to the outer bodice, the printed side that I have here, and open it up. So on the back side you're going to measure two inches from that shoulder seam and make a tiny little dot or a clip with your scissors. The printed pattern piece will have this marking on it so don't worry if you don't feel like measuring. Now go ahead and get your ties and with the seam down at the bottom you're going to place the raw edge of the ties, not the folded side, the raw edge right below the marking that you made on the back of your bodice. Make sure that your ties are going straight left to right you don't want it curved. Then we're just going to take it to your sewing machine and sew a little stitch right close to the edge just enough to hold these ties in place. It won't show on your finished dress so don't worry how it looks it's just to hold those ties in place. Now go ahead and get the lining of your bodice and lay it right on top of this piece with the right sides of your fabric together. I know you can't really see what the right side of my fabric is so just match up the finished shoulder seams on both your front and your back bodice pieces. Go ahead and clip those shoulder seams together and then you're going to pin or clip all the way around the neck part and the back part like I'm doing here so that we can sew this together. Now take this to your serger or your sewing machine and sew all the way around this area. If you're using your sewing machine you can use your straight stitch. Make sure you do not pull this fabric as it's sewing. You want it to lay nice and flat so you don't want it to stretch as you're sewing these two pieces together. So just let your machine feed that fabric through. If you stretch it at all or pull it at all as you're sewing it will create puckers you know or it'll make your fabric curvy and stuff like that instead of making it lay nice and flat. Now what we want to do is go ahead and flip this right side out and lay the inner and outer bodice pieces with the wrong sides together. So we want to open up those seams and you can see that sewing this caught those ties in the back so now those are placed correctly. So what I like to do is I go ahead and fold my fabrics together right at the seams and I like to place clips all the way around the seams and top stitch. You don't have to do this step. Some people like to do an under stitch. If you know what that is you can do that on your lining bodice. Some people don't like to top stitch because they're beginners and that's okay. You don't have to top stitch this part if you don't want to. I just like to go ahead and do it and for those people with experience that like to do that as well you can go ahead and see how I do that here. When you are top stitching make sure you stay close to the edge of your seam about one-eighth of an inch away and I'm using my sewing machine here to top stitch using about a one-eighth of an inch seam allowance. I'm making sure I don't pull or stretch this fabric at all because this part here will definitely make your fabric curvy and not lay nice and flat if you do that. I love this cotton lycra from raspberry creek fabrics because it goes through my sewing machine with ease. I love using dbp and cotton lycra the most to make these dresses. Those knit fabrics sew the easiest to me with my sewing machine. If you're using a jersey or something like that sometimes the ends of the fabrics roll up and it's kind of a pain to use but if you have a walking foot you can attach that to your sewing machine and it will really help that fabric not slide. Now let's go to the back of our bodice and you're going to overlap the bottom edges right here at the corners by about one inch. It doesn't have to be exact and perfect and then we're going to baste some stitches down there at the bottom. Just a very quick stitch right close to the edge of the bottom to hold those two pieces together. It doesn't matter what they look like you won't see this on your finished dress. So that's what creates that overlap in the back of your dress. Now let's go ahead and work on attaching the sleeves. If you haven't done that before this curved part goes against the curved part of your sleeve line. For those who have not sewn sleeves on before this may be the finickiest part of sewing this dress but once you do it a couple of times you'll get it without any issues. So again I'm showing you where these are going. We're going to fold your sleeve in half and then make a nice small slit right at the center of the curve for a place mark. That's the middle of your sleeve and you want to place that little slit right on your shoulder seam. You're going to put it upside down so that it matches just like I have it here. Now this won't match up perfectly with that arm seam on your bodice. We're going to stretch it and give it a little bit of ease as we're clipping it. So I clip the middle first and then I match up each of the corner pieces. When you're matching up that corner piece the flat side here you want to lay flat with the side of your bodice because that's the part that is going to fit as the sleeve. You're not going to sew that part but I just wanted to show you how the corners should match just like I'm doing here. Once you have that done you can see how it doesn't lay nice and flat like it typically would right? That's because you want some stretch to your shoulders so they fit nice. So you're just going to pull the fabric just a little bit to give it some ease and then you're going to lay all the layers of your fabric together and pin or clip those down. Just pull it apart a little bit so that they lay nice and flat and evenly. If you don't do this part when you're sewing it you'll have a bunch of puckers kind of like a gather. So go ahead and do it just like I'm doing here. Do that for both sides for both of your sleeves. Now let's take this to our sewing machine or serger and sew these sleeves in place and if you're using your sewing machine you're going to use a stretch stitch or a zigzag stitch not your straight stitch. Now this is the part where it's okay and you need to stretch the fabric as you go so that way you don't have any puckers. So once you get it on there make sure all three layers of your fabric are right on top of each other and lined up and then you're going to stretch and make sure your dress is out of the way as you sew this in place. Make sure that this sleeve is stretching to lay nice and flat with the bodice of your arm. Do the same thing with both of your sleeves and here's what it should look like when you're all finished. Now you can see where this is turning into the top part of your dress. How adorable is it? All right now we're ready to go to our next step which is just folding this with the right sides together, pinching it at your shoulder seams so that it lays nice and flat the front and the back of your dress just like it should because we want to line up all the sides so that we can sew those together. So start by lining up the seams on your sleeves together and pinning or clipping those in place and then you're going to pin or clip your sleeve together and then the side of your bodice. The front and back may not lay perfectly together so you just want to make sure that you ease them together. This allows for more room for the upper body. Now take this to your machine and starting at the sleeve go ahead and sew all the way across and down to the side. Use your sewing machine, zigzag stitch, or stretch stitch. You don't want to use a straight stitch if you're using a sewing machine. Now I'm going to go ahead and serge this just like that. Now I'm flipping this right side out so that I can show you that the upper bodice is completely finished other than hemming those sleeves which we'll do later. I like to save all the hemming for the last step of making my dress. The next thing that we're going to do is we are going to put together our circle skirt and this is my favorite part. So go ahead and get your two half circles and lay them with the right sides together. Match your skirt up along the straight sides and pin or clip those in place. You're going to sew all the way across and you can use a straight stitch on your sewing machine if you want to. It doesn't matter what stitch you use on this part. If you want to finish the edges you can do that but knit fabrics don't typically fray so you don't have to worry about finishing off the edges of your skirt unless you want to. I'm using my serger so it automatically finishes off those seams. Here's mine sewn across the two straight sides of the top of the skirt and if you open this up it makes a full circle with a little circle in the middle. It looks kind of like a Christmas tree skirt. The next thing you want to do is you want to get both of the seams on the sides because these are going to be the sides of your dresses and fold those two together. Then you're going to find the point right here on the other side from the fold and make a small snip just big enough for you to see it because this quarters off our skirt into four equal parts. The two snips that we made on the front and back of our dress and the two side seams. You want to do this because you want four equal parts to match up with four equal parts of your bodice and then when we attach those two pieces together they will be sewn perfectly and you won't have any you know mismatched seams and all of that. So do the same thing with your bodice. Find the two side seams fold them together and then I like to make a small snip right there to mark the front center and the back center of my bodice. I just make a small slit just like this big enough for me to see it because it won't show when you're finished dress. Now with your bodice right side out flip your skirt so that the wrong side is facing you and pull that bodice right through the middle hole. Now you're going to line up your four equal parts of your bodice with the four equal parts of your skirt. Pin or clip those together in place. Once you have those pinned or clip in place you'll know it doesn't lay completely flat and nice and again that's to allow it to have a little bit of stretch around the waist. You want to get those three fabric pieces and lay them nice and flat together. Stretch the fabric just like this so they lay nice they lay nicely and flat and then go ahead and put a couple more pins or clips all the way around. Once you've done this you're going to take it to your serger or sewing machine and sew all the way around this little circle. If you are using your sewing machine use your stretch stitch or your zigzag stitch. If you are using your sewing machine instead of a serger to do this here's what I like to do if I'm using my sewing machine. I take this free arm part off of my machine. I put the circle right over that and then I sew it just like this and I rotate the skirt all the way around as I'm sewing but making sure I'm not pulling or pushing that fabric. I'm letting the machine do that for me. Now here's what it looks like when you are all done sewing that and if you flip it right side out you have your dress. It is so cute absolutely adorable in person. The only thing that we have left to do now is to hem the sleeves and the bottom of the skirt and that's the easy part. So you can finish hemming your dress however you would like if you have experience. I'm going to show you what works best in my opinion. Knit fabric does not typically fray. You don't have to worry about finishing off these seams. So I just folded over about a half an inch right at the seam of the sleeve and pin or clip that in place and then fold it under a half an inch around the rest of it. You can double fold and then sew if you want to so that you don't see that raw edge but it's not necessary. Doing it this way and not finishing off those edges with your serger if you have experience and know what I'm talking about makes that sleeve have a lot more stretch so don't finish off those edges. I'm using my sewing machine stretch stitch number 17 here and these are the settings that I use on my machine. If you want to you can also use a zigzag stitch just going right across those seams and if I use a zigzag stitch my number 12 here are the settings that I like to use. Now I flip my dress right side out so I can see where I'm sewing and I use the side of my walking foot matched up with the side of my sleeve as my sewing guide. Make sure you rotate that sleeve all the way around as you sew and it's so important that you don't stretch that fabric as you do that. Make sure that your machine is doing all the pulling and pushing. You're not doing that. You're just rotating the fabric and keeping it in line. And here is what my sleeve looks like after using my machine's stretch stitch. You can see it has a nice stretch to it to allow any size arm to go through that really for that size. Now if you had finished off the raw edges with your serger first before doing this it does not allow your sleeve to have as much stretch. This one I finished off with the sergers just to show you and this one I did not. Both I used the stretch stitch and you can see here the one that I serged the raw edge does not have as much stretch to open up that armhole as if you hadn't finished it off. Might look neat or whatever but it works just the same and you don't see the inside of the dress so that doesn't matter. So do the same thing for the bottom of your skirt. Fold it up half an inch all the way around and then take it to your sewing machine and you can use a straight stitch to do this. Typically people would use a double twin needle in your sewing machine to finish off these hems but you know like if you're like the rest of the sewing world and you're sewing for your children and you don't want to spend more money doing stuff like that you don't have to. Just use a straight stitch all the way around. You can also double fold this hem if you want to so that you don't see the raw edge but it's really not necessary. So I don't pin or clip all the way around. I just use the sides of my walking foot or my sewing machine foot down here as my guide and I fold it as I go making sure I do not ever stretch this fabric. I let the machine do that for me. So you can see the width of my hem is about the width of the foot of my machine and I use that as my guide and I just sew using a straight stitch all the way around. I do like to use a twin needle as well sometimes but for the purpose of this video and knowing that most people probably don't own that I'm just using this machine's needle as it is. If you like how it looks to have the zigzag stitch you can also use that and I'm going to show you how I hem using a zigzag stitch. Pretend this is the bottom of my skirt and that we're rolling it inwards the half an inch or if you want to do this with your sleeve you can do that too and then I just let the zigzag go right over top of that raw edge all the way down. You can do it either way. Now we are done with that part. The only thing that you have left to do is I like to go and with my iron I press all of my hems and I just press it flat so they look nice and crisp. I do that with the sleeves and I also do that with the ties on the back of our dress too. Now we're completely finished. It is so cute. I love it. My daughter gets so excited when I make her a new dress using this pattern that I created and they are really simple to make. If you're a beginner start here. You can absolutely do it. It might look intimidating when you're like oh I haven't sewn something like that before but you know what? Everybody starts somewhere and at some point all of us haven't sewn something like that before whenever you're creating so don't be intimidating and if you don't get it on the first try, try again because this is worth it and it is absolutely adorable. Don't forget the printable pattern pieces are below in the link in the description box or you can find them at alohasewingcompany.com. I hope you enjoyed my sewing tutorial. Please make sure to like this video and subscribe to my YouTube channel. You have no idea how much it really helps and you'll be notified anytime a new pattern is released and that is super easy to follow because I gear towards beginners. I have patterns for children, for babies, for household stuff, for adults clothing, all kinds of stuff. So make sure you check us out at alohasewingcompany.com and before you go, mahalo.