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The Dara Sewalong is a step-by-step video series designed to guide you through sewing the Dara, from choosing your size to finishing the final details.
In this sewalong, we walk you through each stage of the process in short, focused lessons. You can move through the videos at your own pace, pause as needed, or skip ahead if you’re already comfortable with certain steps.
Dara is a chemise-style blouse with a romantic, voluminous fit. The dreamy shape comes from a gathered neckline and raglan sleeves, both finished with bias tape.
Version 1 features decorative lace insertions so you can play with texture.
Version 2 omits the lace, leaving a blank canvas for beautiful fabrics.
To follow along, you’ll need the Dara Pattern. Seamwork members can download it as part of their membership, and non-members can purchase it individually in the shop.
Getting Started
Fabric recommendations: Look for lightweight or medium-weight woven fabrics such as cotton lawn, cotton gauze, voile, chambray, swiss dot, rayon challis, linen, rayon crepe, and silk.
The sleeves have a lot of volume, so pay attention to your fabric’s drape and body. Fabrics with a crisper body and less drape will create a more voluminous effect. Fabrics with more drape will billow at the sleeves.
Seamwork members, take advantage of your member deals this month! You can save up to 20% off your order here.
Prepare to Sew
This lesson covers all the basic things you need to know to get started with this sewalong. If you’re a beginner, this will be really helpful to watch!
If you feel like you already know how to get your pattern and fabric ready for sewing, go ahead and skip to the next lesson and you'll learn to do some helpful fitting adjustments.
You're going to learn how to:
- Select a pattern and reference its skill level
- Select a size
- Prepare patterns and fabric
- Cut and mark fabric
Fitting Adjustments
In this video, you’ll learn some helpful fitting adjustments for the Dara blouse.
Armhole Depth
Armhole depth is the distance between your underarm and your shoulder. If your armhole is too high and digs into your body, you need to increase the depth. If it hangs too low and limits your arm mobility, you need to decrease the depth.
Lengthen or Shorten Bodice and Sleeves
You can adjust the length of the bodice and the sleeves to suit your personal preference.
We created a free downloadable PDF called the Four Height Zones to help you gather the information you need to make adjustments to your pattern where you need it. We recommend printing it out and writing your height measurements on it to keep in your sewing journal.
Compare these measurements to the corresponding landmarks on your pattern pieces, and you'll know how much you need to shorten or lengthen that part of the pattern.
And here are some additional fitting resources if you need them:
- Follow this tutorial to lengthen and shorten a sewing pattern
- If you need to adjust the armhole depth, use this tutorial.
- If you want to blend between sizes, use this video tutorial.
- To adjust the shoulder slope, follow this tutorial.
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Here are fitting tutorials for the shoulders and sleeves. - Here are tutorials for wide or narrow shoulder adjustments
- Here are tutorials for small bust adjustments and full bust adjustments.
If you prefer videos, there are bust adjustment videos in the Hansie sewalong here
- Lace insertion (version 1) (00:43)
- Finishing the neckline (10:22)
Sewing Instructions
The PDF instructions will be your main guide as you work through this pattern, but we've created this video to walk you through the trickiest steps in detail. If you need help on a step not shown in this video, check out the Community Group Sew, where other Seamworkers and staff are ready to help out!
The trickiest steps for this pattern are:
