hello and welcome to Professor pincushion in this tutorial I'm going to demonstrate how to sew shoulder straps and then how to attach it to your bodice let's go ahead and get started you should have a pattern piece called strap - cold shoulder strap and it should look something like this the size and the shape may vary just a little bit you're going to lay it out right side up you can see I have two long edges and then two shorter edges over here you're going to fold it in half lengthwise and on the one long edge here at the bottom you're going to go ahead and pin that the physical pattern should tell you what the seam allowance is for this edge now if I looked at mine and it said it was a quarter of an inch so I'm going to go ahead and do that make sure that you do your back stitching on both ends of this stitch take your loop turn it right side out and press it this is the finished pressed version so for turning inside out I'm going to use this loop turner you can see there's a hook on one side it's going to go inside my strap here the hook hooks right onto the outside of your fabric like that and then you're just going to gently pull it in usually towards the beginning you kind of have to help it a little bit but once you get it going it should turn pretty easily bring in your main bodice piece as it's sewn at this point place it right side up so you can see pretty much my bodice is put together at least for the main fabric will have some dots up here at the top of the bodice that should be on your pattern and you should have transferred it to your bodice pieces this is going to correspond with some dots that are also on my strap here so I have a large dot here and a small dot here large small dot and I'm going to place my strap so the raw edges are going to be even now once this is even and the dots are matching up I'm going to go ahead and pin it into place and you'll notice my strap is kind of going off at an angle that's fine yours may go more straight on but for my particular one it's going at an angle so I'm going to pin both my straps into place I'm also going to do the same thing over here and then take it to the machine so we can do a basting stitch your basting stitch is just a temporary stitch just to hold the strap in place for now and you don't need to worry about doing any back stitching and the seam allowance doesn't really matter at this point at this point I'm going to continue on adding to my bodice which means that I need to finish along the neckline area I'm going to do that with a lining if you're doing something with a facing is going to be a similar process so we're going to pretend this crazy fabric is my lining so it looks exactly like my main bodice I'm going to pin it all along the top edges here so neckline armhole and then the back as well and then I'm going to go ahead and Stitch a seam allowance so when my lining gets moved to the inside of the garment this is all going to be finished and you need to make sure that as you're sewing your lining and bodice together you keep them remainder of the strap out of the way so it's only attached here at the top and the rest remains free after I sell my bodice and lining together the next part is doing the under stitching which to really doesn't have that much to do with our straps but I just want to point out one thing so with under stitching you're pulling the lining away from your bodice and your strap is also going to stay with the bodice here all this seam allowance is going to be sewn to the lining fabric so I'm pulling this up and if I was to fill right here I can feel the seam allowance so that's the seam allowance with the lining the bodice and also the strap here that's so that's the only part of the strap that's going to be sewn to the under stitching and then I'm just going to sew right along the seam line so right next to it but it's going to be on the purple side so on the lining side and that's going to attach all that seam allowance to the lining section once your lining is on the inside of your garment we can then attach the other side of our strap so here's our other end for one side and you should have some more marks for the back bodice pattern and there's one right there with my chalk mark and I also have one here on my strap so I'm going to match that up so this is the armhole section here and this is the top of the back so it's going to go up and down like this so it's more it's going more in line with the back here I'm matching up so my mark here is at the same spot of my back and then you're going to go ahead and pin it into place and try on your bodice best you can because you want to make sure that your strap is going to be long enough so you have extra room here so you can give yourself more strap if you need it or less strap once it's in the perfect spot pin it into place and also make sure that you haven't twisted your strap and is going nice and flat across the top of your body once you've adjusted your strap so it's a perfect fit for you go ahead and cut off any excess you have leaving just enough that you can turn under I would say about a quarter of an inch so I'm taking this I'm turning it under a quarter of an inch and then I'm pinning it back into place so all the raw edge of the strap is going to be covered by the strap itself is going to be sandwiched between the strap and your lining and then you're going to repin this and we'll get a little bit closer because we're going to be hand sewing the bottom part of the strap into place they already have my needle and thread ready to go now I'm using a contrasting thread so it's easier for you to see what I'm doing but I definitely recommend doing a matching thread so I have a knot at one end and I recommend starting here on the side so you're going to sew down the side across the bottom and then up the other side I'm just going to start down here at the bottom because it's a little bit easier for you to see what I'm doing so I'm sticking my needle so it's going through the bottom edge of my strap and that way my knot is going to kind of be hidden inside there so now it's in the strap and then I'm going to grab a little bit of the lining make sure you're only grabbing the line mean and you're not grabbing your main fabric so for me to be my cream fabric on the right side because we don't want to see this go all the way through so I just grab a little bit of that fabric and now I'm all my purple lining so now I'm going to grab a little bit of my strap and pull that all the way through and then grab a little bit of the lining again so you're just going back and forth between the two different fabrics and this is going to secure your strap to the lining and you're not going to see that raw edge after your straps are sewn in I definitely recommend doing a top stitch next which means you're sewing along this folded finished edge of your bodice and that's going to make your straps even more secure and also I think it's going to make your bodice look a lot nicer I'm just using a regular straight stitch you can see I'm going right along that folded edge now when it comes to the straps I'm only sewing along the base of the straps I'm keeping the rest of the strap out of the way so I don't want to stitch that down into place then you're not gonna be able to stick your arm through it there's one strap and you can see just the bottom and that's it here's the final look at our straps in our bodice now you can make sure that your straps are the perfect length and the perfect fit new tutorials are released weekly so please subscribe to be notified at the next release make sure to check out our other videos and visit professorpincushion.com to view our complete library well over two hundred sewing video tutorials including our exclusive premium content our premium membership is only $5 a month for unlimited access and only available at professorpincushion.com also don't forget to download our mobile 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