Made By A Fabricista: The Perfect Plus Size Dress

Hi everyone!

Fall is here & even though it’s technically fall, the weather in Indiana hasn’t caught up yet. I’m not really complaining though, because this is my favorite time to wear all my favorite fall dresses, before it gets too windy & cold.

Today I am sharing one of my new favorite dresses. This dress can easily be worn in a dressy style on date nights or to weddings, or even dressed down with sneakers for a walk in the park. I made this dress using a very beautiful floral bubble crepe. The fabric is a light lavender purple with flowers going multidirectional. This made it simple when considering pattern matching & cutting pieces out. For this particular dress I used 3.5 yards & had no fabric left after cutting. I would not consider this crepe to be a beginner’s fabric, because it was very slippery when cutting and also when sewing, however with patience and ample time many things can be achieved. There are also ways to help stiffen a fabric when cutting or sewing such as: light starch, but the crepe material is intentional for having a soft hand, so it would defeat the purpose.

The pattern that I chose for this dress was McCall's 8195. This pattern has many options to create different variations of this dress and/or “hack it” and create something completely new. For my dress I chose pattern C, which was fitting for fall. It has a fitted bodice that flares into a circle skirt & is zipped in the back to enclose it all. The pattern was very simple to follow and was not difficult to sew at all. I didn’t find myself stopping much, because I didn’t understand something, but the dress pattern did not extend to my size, so I graded it a few sizes up & to my surprise it ended up being too big. Usually I do pretty good with grading patterns considering that I used to professionally do this, however sometimes I run into issues when I grade patterns made by other people.

My favorite part of this dress is the overall silhouette. When being plus size, sometimes it can be hard finding things that flatter your body especially in relation to patterns or even resources in the sewing community. This dress defined my wait & enhanced my curves, while still being very moderate & appropriate. The circle skirt also was very flattering & the fabric draped over everything perfectly.

MACY | @macycamile

Unfortunately Fabric Mart Fabrics sell out quickly!
You can find similar fabrics by shopping the following categories: CREPE.