Sewing dresses by hand is all good fun until you get to the long seams.
For my Anglo-Saxon linen underdress, I’m sewing the pieces together with a running stitch and then oversewing the seam allowances to prevent fraying.
The shoulders and sleeves and gussets all came together pretty fast, but now I’m in the middle of sewing in the gores. Those are the tall triangles at the sides, which basically turn the dress from a long tube into something you can wear.
I’ve been watching movies to pass the time while I work on the gore seams. Lately I’ve been on a Danny Kaye kick. I watched both The Court Jester and White Christmas this week.
What do you do to keep your brain from frying on the long, boring parts of projects?
All Kinds of Yarns 
I love The Court Jester! Such a funny movie! Good luck with your project!
Thanks! 🙂
I go to work and work really hard. Result: pre-fried brain.
😀 Brilliant!
I listen to music or podcasts (Writing Excuses is awesome if you haven’t heard of it). I can’t watch two things at once.
We used to listen to Writing Excuses all the time, until I got tired of how often they would goof off and stray from their topics…
Have you tried a flat fell, stops all the fraying very efficiently and is period.
I quite like sewing the long seams, they’re nice and brainless and relaxing
🙂 I thought about it, but I didn’t want the stitches from felling the seams to show up on the right side, and this was the only way I found (in my probably inadequate research) that avoided that.
They do show, but done well it actually looks really nice, and isn’t obtrusive. Shows more on linen than on Melton wool, but on linen a flat fell should only be 1/4 inch wide
I think I’ll try that for my next linen project. It’d probably go faster than what I did here and use up less thread to boot.
its also comfier, the seam lies beautifully flat against your skin and doesn’t rub