 Hi, I'm Claire Louise and I'm a theatrical wardrobe mistress working in the West End of London. Today I'm going to be sharing with you some of my tips and tricks on how to get the best out of clothing repairs and alterations. In this video I'm going to show you how to make a pillowcase dress. The first thing I need to do is to measure the finished length of the dress that I'd like, so that's the measurement from the collarbone to where the bottom of the hem wants to be. Now I'm going to make one that's 23 inches long, so I'm just going to put a measurement with a pin that's 24 and a half from the bottom edge of this open end. That's just there. And just to let you know, I've already hemmed up the envelope that's inside the hem, so there's no chance of that catching before we start cutting. I'm going to take my pillowcase and fold it in half. I'm going to take another measure of 24 and a half. And then I'm just going to cut straight across. And I don't need that anymore. The next thing I'm going to do is I need to create some armhole shapes. So I can take a measurement from another dress about how deep it is or I can just do it by eye. So we want just a little bit of a curve here and then through all the layers, I'm just cutting out that curve. And if we open it up, it's starting to look a little bit more like a dress like that. We could put any kind of decoration we liked on the front, we could put buttons or ribbons. So the first thing we need to do is to create a finish on this armhole curve. And for that, we're going to use some bias binding that's both practical because it washes well and it's decorative. And we're going to sandwich bias binding. This is pre-made and it's a piece of fabric that's cut on the bias that's been pressed with these little folds. And what we're going to do is we're going to sandwich our cut edge in between that really easy technique for applying binding. So don't worry about a seam allowance on the top. And I'm just pinning that. I'm just lining my cut edge up in the middle of my binding and folding it over. And now I'm ready to machine my bias binding on. I'm just going to machine all the way along. Now I've stitched that with a contrast thread so you can see it. And if I've done a matching thread, that would be quite nice. And I'm just going to stitch the other side. Now I need to create a little channel at the top. And I'm going to pass my ribbon ties through. So to do this, I'm just pressing over a small fold of about a centimeter, half centimeter. And then I'm pressing a second fold. It's about three quarters of an inch. And then I'm going to pin that along the edge before I take it to the sewing machine. And this is a draw string channel. And I need to do this on both sides, so both the front and the back. So when I come to stitch this, I'm stitching with my needle quite close to that edge. This is called edge stitching. And I want to make sure that I do some reversing because this is a stress point at the outside edges. Now that's the first side. And then I'm going to need to machine the other side too. We need two pieces of ribbon. And this is going to be one side, one on the front and one at the back. So you need to take a rough measure of what the height from the shoulder is across the front and up. And then double that so you've got enough ribbon for a nice bow at the shoulders. So that's one piece. And then cut a second piece. And then I'm going to use this to guide it through this channel. And make sure they're about even either side. And I'm going to repeat with that side. You can measure this on the person who's going to wear the dress. And if you want you can put a stitch there or you can leave it for you to allow for them growing. And just draw in that up to make it the same length. And taking this side. I'm just going to make a nice little bow and these form my shoulder straps. And when you decide on the fixed length, it's a good idea to do a double bow. The dress doesn't fall off when she's out and about. And that's how to make a pillowcase dress.