Sewing project progress: pink checked dress muslin, part V

This past weekend I sewed in the facings of my dress muslin. I'm fairly certain I didn't do it exactly right. The diagram in the sewing instructions was as clear as mud-- it looked to me almost like they were meant to be attached above the top part of the back and front pieces, but I know that's not what facings do, so I took my best shot. They did not seem to match up at the edges the way I expected. I think I was supposed to sew them together at the edges before I tried to put them in the dress, but they seemed to fit even worse that way, so I just laid each of them in separately and then tried to match them up as best I could. Then I ironed the two layers and pinned them together.

Thinking about it now, I should have realized that this operation was generic enough to look up on the Internet and get an idea of how it was supposed to work before I sewed it. Instead, dissatisfied with what I did, I only thought to find a tutorial afterward. I think what I should have done, if I understand what I read later in an article about putting facings into a sleeveless dress, is to put them right sides together, sewed them in place, and then turned them inside out like you do in so many other aspects of garment making. The video I watched also left the top of each shoulder unsewn and suggested, in a process that is still not a hundred percent clear to me, that you somehow pull the back of each shoulder piece through the front shoulder piece's unsewn top part such that they lay inside one another like larger and smaller tubes, then you sew just inside the lip of the whole tube you just formed. Then you turn it right side out again and you're supposed to have a clean hidden shoulder seam inside. If that makes any sense. I'm not sure I get it myself, especially how you're supposed to pull them through one another to make that tube. I think I at least understand it enough to give it a try and see if I can logic it out myself. The object of this project is to learn and do better in the future, so that's something.

As it was, I at least had the presence of mind to think about how I wanted the seams to look on the outside. I ended up clipping the seam allowance, folding each piece of edge over on itself, and pressing it flat. Then I sewed in down all the way around the edges from the neckline to down around the armholes. It isn't as nice as a turned edge might be, but at least from the outside it looks pretty neat.

Here's what the front facing looked like from the inside, though without the armhole edges similarly pinned.

And here's how the back facings looked, again before pinning the edges of the armholes. I accidentally interfaced the same sides of both back facings, meaning one side had to be laid interfacing side out as you can see, but I figured it wasn't a big deal since it was on the inside of the dress.

I just sewed the shoulder seams right sides together and flipped them. The results were not nearly as neat as the process's described above, but it's not terrible. At least from the outside, the dress looks okay. As I said, I got it to fit surprisingly well. All that remains is to hem it, and then I will model my not-hideous-but-still-very-cobbled-together first true finished handmade dress.

Also, as a sewing side note, I picked up another nice sheet to repurpose for material. I really like this one, with its black and gold stripes on a white background, and I think it would make a really cool button-down shirt.