- Karl Lagerfeld said, "One is never overdressed or underdressed with a little black dress."

Another quote I love is this one, "What is it about wearing that little black dress that makes us feel confident, beautiful, splendid, even invincible?"

On the days when you feel low and invisible, why not try this on for size?

Imagine you are wearing a stunning black dress and then proceed with your day.

Today on "Fit 2 Stitch," we'll learn the power of that little black dress.

(bright music) - [Announcer] "Fit 2 Stitch" is made possible by Kai Scissors, Bennos Buttons, OC Sewing, Orange County, Vogue Fabrics, Pendleton, Imitation of Life, and Clutch Nails.

- If we have to come up with one garment that's been the most classic, over all these years of fashion, we would all have to agree it's that little black dress.

The little black dress, created by Chanel years and years ago, was really the culmination of everything that was positive for a woman.

What we know about that little black dress though, it is the hardest item for us to purchase.

Because, as Lora's gonna show us today and she's here, she's made the muslin, if there's any reason you make a muslin... Hi, Lora.

- [Lora] Hi.

- It's gonna be because you're trying to make a little black dress.

Because the waist has to be at the right point, the bust has to be at the right point, everything has to be at the right place and there's no way to alter it after the black dress has been made.

So it's important that we do a muslin.

How long would you say it took you to make the muslin?

- Oh, less than an hour.

Once I got the fabric.

- Okay, good.

- And how did you decide upon the size you were gonna make?

- By measuring some garments in my closet and deciding what I liked and the fit of that particular garment, that I could translate.

- So the garments included some ease for you?

- Absolutely.

- All right and this is a knit, so her little black dress, she wanted it in the knit and so we went ahead and made the muslin.

You wanna make the muslin, you know, muslin refers to, a lot of people think it's that 100% cotton yucky stuff, it really is just a trial garment, same fabric, as similar to the final product as you decide you want to do.

But the closer that is to the final product, like this has stretch in both directions, you want your muslin to be the same.

Is that fair?

- Correct.

- Okay, so we've picked the size.

We've made the muslin, you've got a princess seam.

- [Lora] Right.

- A couple things to know about the princess seam, is that princess seam does not have to go through the bust point.

A lot of women think that, there's a bust circle that evolves around the bust point, and as long as that princess seam goes through that bust circle, it's good to go.

And in fact, my choice would be not to have the princess seam go through the bust point, it's just, you know, the princess seam is used for fit, it's not for styling.

So to have a go through the bust point is really not typically what you want.

All right, so we had Lora in front of a mirror, we practiced, you guys before we did this.

- We practiced a lot.

We practiced.

So we had her in front of a mirror and the first thing that she didn't like, is she didn't like how wide the shoulders were.

- Right.

- And there was a couple other little things that she didn't like.

So we're gonna fix all of that and I'm gonna go in order.

I've taught you before, but I'm gonna remind you 'cause it's been a while, we always wanna do length.

- [Both] Circumference and depth.

- Poor girl, she's got it hammered into her head.

- I know.

So length, when we talk about a princess seam dress, without a waist seam, is typically not something we have to worry about because the princess seam usually is not too high or too low, it only has to be in a certain area.

We have a three-inch error factor.

So I don't have any length issues here.

We're not talking about the length of the dress, how long it is, we're talking about the internal lengths, shoulder to bust, bust to waist, waist to hem.

Because this doesn't have actually a waist seam, it doesn't have to match perfectly to her waist either.

So if it's a little high or a little low, that's no big deal.

The hip, same thing.

There's a hip line, it's not really marked right on a dress, so whether it's high or low, no big deal.

So we've got length and I'm gonna check off the box.

I'm gonna say we're okay on that.

- I think so.

It's comfortable.

- It is comfortable, it's a nice knit.

Picked a nice muslin.

Would you turn it inside out and use it?

- I would turn it inside out definitely.

- So she wouldn't go to the store in the way it looked now.

- No, no.

- But you do wanna put your seams to the outside, she's done perfect, okay?

All right, then what we wanna do, is we're gonna go circumference and we talked about how you picked it and you picked it by the bust, but what about the hips?

Do you feel like it's okay in the hips?

- I measured the hips of the pattern and I measured the hips of garments that I already have and the hips needed to be, believe it or not, narrowed in.

- Yay!

- And so I emailed Peggy again and I said, "Can I do this?"

Because she said, I have to make the pattern the same and she wrote back, "Oh, wonderful, yes."

- Okay, so she got to go in, so that means she's one size here and a smaller size here and you can pick up circumference from measuring.

It's very easy thing to pick up circumference from measuring because it's flat.

So that takes care of length and that takes care of circumference.

The part that's the most difficult and it's harder to measure, would be the depth.

- Depth.

Depth.

And I'm gonna start with the depth, I'm gonna start at the top of the body, I'm gonna work my way down because shoulder seams, usually there's gonna be some kind of depth issue.

So in this case, because she said it was too wide, I'm gonna use the princess seam to narrow that shoulder and because we looked in a mirror and because I know how much she said she wanted it in, I'm gonna pull it in the amount.

It is style where I drape that, there's no anatomical part of the body that that shoulder seam aligns to.

It is simply what you like and what you want on your dress.

Once I've taken it into here, I have to do the back the same, but I also have to taper to nothing down to her bust, 'cause remember, the bust was the right size.

So I don't wanna take anything out around the bust, I just wanna use it as a stopping point.

And I don't want to take it out of this piece because if you notice this piece widthwise is smaller than this piece.

So in order to keep that balance of the style of the pattern there, I'm gonna take it right out of this center front piece, taper down to nothing at the bust line.

And then I'm just gonna turn her because I'm gonna take the same amount out of this back.

And if you notice, and, now when you're draping yourself, this is a little harder to see because you don't really see that shoulder blade, but that's kinda like the bust point in the back.

You're gonna literally taper to nothing, right here at that bone.

There's no reason to take a below there because that's what that whole dart is accommodating there in the back, all right?

So that's what we're gonna do there in the back and we're gonna bring it down.

It'll usually be about six inches, roughly, if I have to give you a number, it'll be about six inches and that looks beautiful here.

The back actually looks beautiful, you'll have to ignore this, this is a little, it's called a Lora voice, it's so that Lora can talk, it's her little microphone, but you notice the dress is not showing any sway back, it's just circumference issue so we can leave it there and we're gonna ignore that and we're gonna just move on.

Okay, then if...

I'm gonna have you move this way just a little bit because whenever you're draping a sheath, you always wanna watch the bottom of the dress.

And that's simply because the problems, especially in a knit, there's many times that the problems in the top, you don't even know they're there 'cause they're soft until you get all the way to the bottom.

So when you get all the way to the bottom, this little wrinkle right here, just relax there, and it shows right there, that's the fact that the shoulder angle is a little bit too sloped for her.

So I'm gonna pick that up and you'll take it up this, you'll taper it to nothing all the way around.

- Of the neck.

- Now with these changes right here, you've got a change here and a change here and they're kinda colliding.

It does not matter which one's done first, as long as you measure the amounts, get them done right.

This one right here is about a 3/8ths goes to nothing.

This one right here, we're narrowing the shoulder and remember that's twice, so when we get to the tissue, I'll show you.

This one right here is about a half inch and it's also twice.

And it goes down to the bust and it goes back.

So far that's all we've done.

But again, in looking at the hem of this dress, I see there's two things that are happening.

Number one, whenever the dart is not correct and the dart, the bust dart in this case is built into this princess seam, but it's also been pivoted, so originally it was the right cup size, we moved it up here, for whatever reason it doesn't work.

And so two things will happen.

Number one, the dress will swing out and number two, it'll be longer at the side than it is at the front.

So you always wanna do it in a full length mirror, watch it and all you have to do is kinda reach over, pinch in, put a pin there and then see if it straightens out the bottom.

So we've done that and I can see, and you can see, that when I start to take this up, how much better that hem looks.

You do only need to drape one side, there's really no advantage.

This dart right here is not going to be in the final garment.

So the whole reason I'm making this tissue, making the change right now in the muslin, is so that I can make it in my tissue and it doesn't have to be in my final dress.

Things like sway backs, she doesn't have one, but if you had that, you wouldn't be able to fix that in a final product if you hadn't made your muslin.

So the most important thing the muslin will tell you, is the depth of the garment and depth is something that is a lot of times internal and it's something that can't be done.

And Lora, I'm gonna switch you just a little bit because see how the fabric is just not stopping and so you really gotta listen to the fabric when you do this and it actually comes all the way to the back and you can see that when I do that all the way to the back, that microphone pack hardly's even visible anymore, look how pretty that looks.

It just really gives it a nice clean finish.

And so there's about a half inch, half inch, half inch.

It's a little bit more right here at the bust, it's about 5/8ths of an inch and then it tapers to nothing and I think that looks amazing.

Your sleeve, your dart is fine.

- little long.

That length would be at the bottom.

- Right?

- So we can just turn that up and not worry about it, she's got a dart right here, but that dart right there is at the elbow, I'm good with that.

Just beautiful.

Feel good?

- Feels great.

- But it felt good even when it looked bad, but now it looks really good.

Okay, so Lora has done a few changes.

Do you wanna make any comments in this process?

- No, the only thing that I would suggest that I noticed is that you match as closely as possible, the dress that you're doing the muslin from, as to the dress that you are doing the fabric from.

- Good girl, good girl.

Because in my case, they were a little different but the changes were the same, it's just a matter of degree.

- You're right, 'cause it's depth and depth is the same in woven as it is a knit.

- Right.

- Might a little different but mostly it's the same, so that's a good point.

All right, go change, let's see what you did.

- Okay.

- It's gonna be quite the surprise.

And while she's changing, I'm gonna go ahead and go over the tissue changes.

Let's just basically understand where that sheath dress comes from.

Even before I make these tissue changes, let's look back at these dresses for just a minute.

Remember that when we start making patterns, we have five pieces.

Those five pieces are the bodice front, the bodice back, skirt front, skirt back and sleeve.

So whenever you get a sheath dress, you know that those pieces all fit together, bodice front, front skirt, bodice back, skirt back, obviously no sleeve on this one and that's where the styling begins.

This is a princess seam and so what I wanted you to see is, notice that they moved the princess seam outside of the bust circle and so you have a little bit of a dart remaining.

That's okay, it's just again, where they wanted to have that side panel, that is styling.

As far as what they do with the dart, if it's outside the bust circle, they have to still stitch in the very tip of this dart, which in this one they did.

So this one, again, a sheath dress, that little black dress, whatever you wanna call, is just telling us that we've put the top in the bottom together and we've cut them all as one.

And this case, we've turned it into a cowl, added some gathers, and we've made that just a great little dress.

Again, hard to fit because, like even Lora's case, where she's thinner in the hips, whatever bust size she is, when she's thinner in the hips, we lose being able to buy that ready to wear.

So the beautiful thing about sewing is we can nail that fit just so much easier.

So this is done on a knitting machine and this has done, again, that fit has to be exactly right, but notice, even in the knit, there's a bust dart here.

And what that bust dart does, is again, how it brought Lora's dress into her body and also it keeps the side of the body, the same length as her body.

When we talk about darts, remember that the size of the body is shorter than the front of her body, so when I take those darts, I'm actually making the fabric and her body the same and the fabric and her body the same.

Because the front is longer, side is shorter.

We've got two darts, we've got the shoulder dart and we've got the bust dart.

Okay, so let's look at the tissue and go through these tissue and we'll make the necessary changes there what we did.

And I lay out my pieces always, just as it is so that I don't get confused as to a side seam or front or any of those.

So I've got my front, I've got my side front, they sew at the side seam, even if it means turning the tissue over, which I did and then of course the back.

So this is the side I draped her exactly as I did and I'm gonna go in the exact same order that I did.

The very first thing I did is I narrowed her shoulder.

So I'm gonna come in and in this particular piece here, you can either draw it or you can fold the tissue.

I don't know if one is easier to another but remember I said I took that in, it was about a half an inch, both sides.

So I'm gonna take that half inch and I'm literally just gonna take it all the way down to the bust point.

And, you know, anytime you fold that, it's really just gonna almost do it by itself.

And I've already cut this tissue out to the same size she used, the same size she told me and all those other things.

All right, so it's easy as that.

If I am not a tissue changer, I don't have to use the tissue.

I could simply sew the changes into that muslin that she made, put it back on, see if I like it, trim it all down to 3/8ths, take it apart and just use that in my pattern.

I don't have to come back to this tissue, just so you know.

Okay, so that changed the shoulder in the front, we'll go to the back and we'll change the tissue in the back.

And again, same thing, right here, it was a half an inch folded over but remember it only went down about five inches and that takes care of that.

All right, easy enough.

Then what we did is we did a shoulder angle and I'm probably more likely to draw a shoulder angle because when I do, I put these two pieces together and I put the size that she made.

It's a straight angle line, it's always a straight angled line.

I marked my half inch right here and I just draw it right to the original.

When you do that, you've actually drawn through this piece and through this piece and I think it's a little easier to do.

When you're doing a princess seam, you've got that seam down the middle.

So take your two shoulder pieces and you could cut off, I would cut off the seam allowance at this point, overlap the seam allowance to where you've got it just as it would be sewn.

Take your half an inch, move it here, put the original line where it is, which is right there, we're not changing and I can draw it across.

And just cut that away.

Now because I made that arm hole smaller, I'm gonna drop the whole arm hole down, that exact same size.

I'm not gonna change the size of the arm hole but you notice it's a half inch here, so I'm gonna take a down a half inch here and then redraw the arm hole.

Don't change the sleeve, I don't need to do anything to the sleeve, there's no problems there.

All right.

So then we had one more little change.

It was right in here where the bust dart is originally and that was about a 5/8ths.

So again, I'm gonna take the tissue and it's 5/8ths double.

I have a tendency to always measure what the one side is because when I do it in the dress and when I do it in the tissue, it's the same, 5/8ths.

So I don't try to measure both sides and then it gets confusing.

Just measure the one side, it went to nothing there, lay it down, tape it, then when you come to the piece that's adjoining, measure the same distance down, take it up, overlap it, except it went from 5/8ths here and it was like a half here.

So measure the dress, make sure, you wanna make sure your changes are the same all the way across the board.

Remember what I was saying?

How that fabric just wouldn't stop?

So when you brought it to the back, make those same changes and it was just a little half inch, right through here.

And that's, it don't make these changes hard, they're not hard.

Just walk them through, length, circumference, depth.

And I always say to women, try to keep in mind, there's only three.

So if you do one and it doesn't work, try the other two.

The good news is it won't take you 20 years, right?

You've only got three.

Okay, so what Lora did, is she was so excited, she said, "I wanna make something with it."

And so we said, "Yay."

And that's the goal I think for many of us, once we get that fit down, yeah, we wanna play with it.

So Lora's gonna come out and show us now what she did with this.

And she's just the epitome of glamor.

Is this just beautiful?

It's just beautiful.

And she's like, "It looks so much better than the muslin," right?

- Right.

- Right.

But you notice the fit is right where she wants it.

It's clean here, we didn't have to worry about the hem.

Tell us what you did.

This is really cool.

- Oh, well, first of all, I changed the neckline a bit because I wanted to wear the jewelry that I had preselected and so I changed the neckline, lowered it just slightly.

- So she widened it.

We're just gonna show you, we marked it on here and she only, if you notice this piece is narrower now.

- Right.

- So she kind of balanced that.

- Exactly and so I drew my new neckline, which is more of a boat neckline than a jewel neckline.

- So 14 and 3/4 is what is here.

- To about 21.

- 21 in center front.

- Exactly.

- And whenever you do French curve positions, you can only, if you pick two points, 'cause we played with this for a while, you have to be able to repeat the neckline 'cause there's only two points.

So that was really good, to know the numbers is really a good thing.

You're so smart.

(Lora laughs) This is cool.

- I wish I were.

Okay, so she got the neckline and then you can see how pretty that on and it really made room for those earrings.

- Right and plus it was easier to slip over the head, a lot, a lot easier.

- It's supposed to be all about beauty, not function.

- I know, not function.

Okay, but there you go, we've got some function in there.

Okay, so she widened the neckline and that's all you had to deal with, was the first piece.

- Exactly.

- 'Cause it's on the fold and she did a little trim there.

- Yes, I just took some of the skirt material, cut it on the bias for a binding and bound the neckline all the way round.

- And that's such a good idea.

- Whenever you're dealing with a print, that's a great stopper.

Not that her earrings, aren't a great stopper already, but you notice there's just a really nice clean separation between the print of the garment and her neckline.

I mean, it's really, it's so pretty on you.

- Thank you.

- Do you like it?

- I like it very much and especially I like it because I've made it into two separate pieces.

I didn't want it to just hang in the closet.

So I'm- - Now, let's just explain this for a second.

Let's go back, let's come back here just a little bit and just explain this for a little bit.

Okay.

So what you've got.

- I had a straight hem and I decided it would be limiting.

So I decided to angle the hem and make two garments out of it.

- She doesn't go out every Friday night, that's really what she's saying.

- That is the whole reason.

- And I knew I would also wanna wear pants with it.

So then I got into ratio and proportion and I used a three to two ratio at the center front and cut everything on an angle.

- Okay so let's talk about that for just a minute.

So you wanna use the middle point as the measuring point.

So she measured, go ahead.

- From shoulder to knee and divided it by three so I could get my third.

- So she did the third to this point and then made it at an angle.

So all you have to do is pick that middle point.

- Exactly.

- So this is a completely separate, I don't wanna undress you.

- Oh that's okay, it was a dress before.

- This is a completely separate top.

- [Lora] Right, attached to a velvet bottom.

- [Peggy] Because you can wear this with pants.

- [Lora] Exactly.

- [Peggy] Okay, perfect.

- Which is what my goal was to begin with.

So it made double duty.

The other issue, if you- - Now, what you did underneath, talk about this.

- Oh, I just, I had a piece of a black velvet.

- It's not a skirt.

It's actually a little dress, it's a tank dress underneath.

- It's a tank dress.

I took my tank top, which I had and, and took it down to the eight inch hip line and attached the velvet skirt.

The only thing was, I had to carefully measure around the hips because the velvet did not stretch, so it had to be as large as my hips here but tapered in enough that I could have some type of a taper in the skirt.

- But also, you know, it goes to what we're talking about is we talk further into the episode, we're talking about mix and matching, so she really could wear the skirt with a blazer.

You could wear it with all kinds of variables.

- Anything.

Exactly.

So it gives you two pieces, it's a sheath dress and yet it gives you two separate pieces to wear that sheath.

- Right.

Okay.

Next issue.

- Next issue was now, just quickly, I discovered if you lay the nap with the nap, if you lay the grain with the nap, it's very smooth and it shows up more black.

If you lay it the opposite way, it shows more silver.

I wanted more black.

I don't know if it'll show.

- So it's like that.

Okay and this goes down.

- No, no, let me do that, okay?

You will stand there and look pretty and I'll do this.

Okay, so this is really what you're talking.

- Right and it does show more silver.

- And this is really when we talk about visionary because you really wanna get a chance to see what it's going look like.

Fabrics change, fabrics do different things.

So if we take a step back and really get, we can really see the differences.

One is richer and, you know, I think so many times I've seen where women have actually made the garment and then they don't like it, just because we didn't take the necessary precautions to do what we wanted to do.

- And then the only other change I made was the sleeve length because I wanted to accommodate the bracelet so I shortened, it may be an inch and three quarters and that was basically it.

- So this is really thinking ahead.

it's going all the way to the end and then working it backwards.

- But having an idea what you wanted.

- Absolutely.

That's the end.

- The end result, right?

- The end result is having the idea, where did you get the ideas from?

- Oh, I looked at pictures- - We can take these pieces off.

- Oh I forgot they were on there.

I looked at pictures, I drew some things out.

I went shopping, didn't buy anything, but I found some ideas and I like asymmetrical because on me, I feel that it takes pounds off.

And so- - It does.

- It does on everybody.

- And so that was really the reason I tried to make the bottom asymmetrical.

But there were several pictures of the dress, very similar to this, in just about anywhere.

I mean, it's not original on my part.

- So I think that's really important, that in that whole discovery process, we really figure out what it is we like, what it is we're going to and how we're gonna get there with the base that we have.

You've done an outstanding job.

Can I say thank you?

- Well thank you.

And I mean, you look amazing, - And you can say thank you.

I know it was a big sacrifice to come out in those pajamas.

- Oh, those old pajamas were- - Thank you, Lora.

- Thank you, bye-bye.

- Bye.

So a couple things, you know, the thing about this sheath dress, is it's just forever, it's forever, you know?

We've been joking that as we go to sleep every night, you wake up the next morning, you're a different size.

It's not that dramatic.

You really can, once you fit the sheath and especially when you go through that process and you understand, it's usually not much, it's just a little tweak here, a little tweak there, be patient with the process.

It's just the best thing I can say to you because it's really no different than anything, if you're just really patient, it'll just turn out incredible.

Our next show features fabulous furs.

Donna Salyers started her business in her garage and now shows her unique faux furs in Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman.

We'll show you how to wear furs, how to make them part of our everyday lives.

Join us next time on "Fit 2 Stitch."

(relaxing music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Kai Scissors, Bennos Buttons, OC Sewing, Orange County, Vogue Fabrics, Pendleton, Imitation of Life, and Clutch Nails.

To order a four DVD set of "Fit 2 Stitch" series nine, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.