Seven Buttons Designs: A Mermaid Tale

Hello Chickadees!

Well, Halloween has come and gone, and in the hubbub, I forgot to write a blog post about my halloween sewing! Better late than never I suppose?

A while back, one of my friends approached me about doing some sewing for her Halloween costume. She told me that she wanted to be a mermaid, and sent me a few pictures for inspiration. I was super excited to work on this, cause I LOVE making costumes.

The one thing that she really wanted was a two-tone fin skirt. Luckily, my local fabric store had a large amount of super sparkly dancewear fabric, with several different shades of green and blue. We settled on dark green, and I found some aqua sparkly organza for the "fin" part. It had lots of body, which meant that I wouldn't need to add a crinoline or any other layers.

After getting her measurements, I traced off a copy of my current go-to pencil skirt pattern. I had to trace in between sizes in order to be roughly her size, but since the main "skirt" fabric is a very stretchy dancewear fabric, I didn't need to be super precise with exact sizing. I scooped down the centre front to be more like a mermaid tail, and added a waistband just to make it a bit more secure.

For the lower "fin" portion, I decided it would be easiest to just gather the organza to the bottom of the skirt portion. I added a gusset in the back as well, to make sure that she was able to walk, and add a bit of extra drama.

We had originally thought of finding a shell bra, but my go-to costume place did not stock them this year! So instead, she brought me an old bra that she didn't care about too much, and I draped a bra pattern on it. I wanted it to have three sections so that the seamlines would at least look like a shell.

I didn't want to mess with closures in the back, so I made it with ties like a bikini. I added ribbon guards in the back to keep the straps secured to the bikini.