Made By A Fabricista: Birthday Dress

May is my absolute favorite month, we get to enjoy spring weather and it is my birth month.  The birthstone for May is Emerald. I think emerald is such a gorgeous color so when I saw this beautiful ombre charmeuse I thought it would be the perfect fabric to make for my birthday dress. 

To be honest it took me a while to narrow down on a design.  After a lot of back and forth I ended up going back to my first sketch that I created. I love to sketch out my ideas to figure out the patterning and materials.

To create the design I used the method of draping on my dressform.  I used the lightweight muslin that Fabric Mart offers.  It is always best to use a muslin or material similar to your final fabric. 

I started first by marking my style lines with some draping tape on my dress form.  I tore out pieces of muslin to fit within those lines making sure I am always marking my grainline. I also used the muslin to determine how I will create the rosettes onto my cups once the base was created. I thought the rosettes would be a nice touch and play into the idea of “May flowers”.

Once everything was marked, I took it off the form trued up my seams where I used rulers to mark my lines for accuracy.  It's important to also transfer all of your notches and grain information.  I then made a mockup muslin to fit myself.  Fitting oneself can be kinda tricky but I believe I was able to do a good fit. 

From there I made all of my adjustments and corrections and finalized my pattern. Now I am able to cut into my fabric!

With the ombre of the fabric I was able to get different shades of green throughout the dress.  To assemble I started first with the base of my corset, to help with structure I interfaced all of my pieces to help create more support.  I then constructed the base of the cups then stitched on my piping to create the rosettes. 

I love how my dress turned out and I am glad that I stuck with my initial design!

JASMINE  | @sewmuchjazz