Working My Way Through the Charm Patterns Gina Bustier: From Sewing Retreat and Beyond

My completed Charm Patterns Gina Bustier dress, made with the Charm Patterns Circle Skirt

Today I want to go into a little bit more detail of the dress I made at the Charm sewing studio retreat last month and how the pattern I used has grown to become a functional part of my own Charm Patterns library. Somehow it's been almost a month since I attended the retreat and I just sewed the bodice straps on today, finally making the dress complete. Before leaving for the retreat I sewed a mock-up of the pattern so that I would be able to get assistance with fitting from the Charm team, which is a huge treat for a home sewist since I do all my fittings myself, which can be challenging. Self fittings require a TON of taking off and putting on one's project and lots of pinning and standing in front of a mirror trying to assess fit at odd angles or with a picture taken in the mirror. Not only did I get in-person help with gauging the edits I would need to make in my pattern, I got this help from the people who make the pattern and know exactly how it is supposed to fit!

The Timeless Treasures Vintage Rose print cotton I have been saving for the perfect dress.

For the retreat I chose a pattern from Charm Patterns' Patreon called the Gina Bustier, which is a standalone top, but I had a cut of fabric that I envisioned as my fantasy bustier dress and knew I would need to make the Gina as a dress with a circle skirt (my favorite skirt style). I wasn't 100% sure the Charm Circle Skirt would be a good match to the Gina Bustier since the bustier gets a lot of it's magical fit from a mesh panel at the center back, but the lovely ladies at Charm assured me they would assist me in getting it where I wanted it (they were right and it was a breeze fitting the two patterns together). I chose this pattern to make at the retreat because I have never fitted the three piece bra style cups of the bustier before and wanted all the help I could get in perfecting the fit. This pattern also utilizes the unique technique of enclosing the inner seams with boning channeling, which Gertie says is a high end method, and I love a high end method!

Boning channeling used to enclose the seams of my second Gina Bustier dress, pictured below.

My fitting experience was straightforward, requiring only some minor edits, pinching out a small amount of fabric in the bra cup and also in the length of the bodice. As a shorter waisted person I am used to making length adjustments, but Angie at Charm showed me a better and more efficient way of doing it than I had been, and I have gone on to use her technique in a second dress pattern since getting back! Once I had my edits transferred to the pattern, I cut out my beloved rose print fabric and went to work getting the bodice constructed. My initial choice of red thread for topstitching in the boning channeling turned out to be disastrous as I was not able to sew as straight as I wanted and I hated the appearance from the outside of the garment, so I took it out and redid it in white, which I love so much more. When I got home I made a couple more tweaks that took me two entire days, but in the end I'm super happy with this dress and the experience I had making it, especially everything I learned and saw at the retreat. I cannot say enough how wonderful and gracious everyone is at Charm and how much I loved being around my fellow attendees.

Me in my Charm Patterns Betty Dress at San Diego Comic Con 2023, along with my husband in a Charm Patterns Presley Shirt, and my daughter in a self drafted gathered skirt.

I enjoyed the process of making the Gina so much that I decided to use it to rework a dress I made for last year's San Diego Comic Con, another Charm Patterns dress called The Betty Dress, which I loved making and received so many compliments on, but due to a technical issue I did not want to wear again (I will definitely make another version in the future--maybe in another fabric for this year's SDCC). I have known for a year that I wanted to salvage this Barbie print fabric from the Betty Dress because it was expensive and I love it, but the issue with this sort of project is being able to recover not only enough fabric to make a whole new bodice, but also the very full skirt that I love so much and cannot live without. Luckily for me, the Betty Dress skirt is made of multiple yards of fabric and the Gina Bustier is incredibly friendly to a gathered skirt, which the Betty has, so I knew I should be able to maximize every inch of fabric. Seam ripper in hand, I sat down for a lengthy disassembling.

My new Barbie Gina Bustier dress

This refashioning project involved me completely removing the zipper for reuse, disassembling every section of the Betty to salvage what I could of the bodice for bustier pieces, gathering the skirt back down to waist length, and then supplementing the pattern pieces with black accent fabric. I enjoyed this project so much that I found myself wondering what other dresses I could make into something entirely new. I definitely tapped into my inner Scarlett O'Hara and envisioned her pulling the curtains off the wall for her incredible velveteen dress as I seam ripped my way through the Barbie Betty. The end result is just a tad shorter than I normally like, but I feel like a Barbie cupcake in it, which is usually my personal barometer for whether I love a dress or not. Does it give cupcake? It MUST. Hopefully Barbie will still be having a moment at Comic Con in July so I can enjoy the fruits of this fairly intensive process!

Back view of the Gina Bustier's unique mesh panels

Now that I have gone through all these steps and have two Gina Bustier dresses that I will love wearing for vastly different occasions, I am adding this pattern to my permanent repertoire of go-to bodices. Being able to rely on a pattern and pull it out when the right fabric comes along is truly one of the great joys of sewing my own clothes and I hope this post demonstrates what working through a sewing pattern can look like and all the various forms it can take. I went to Los Angeles over the weekend and went to Mood Fabrics, where I purchased a silk brocade that I plan to use for a standalone Gina I hope to make in the next month or so, if Comic Con sewing will allow it. I also purchased some beautiful pink silk taffeta for another Charm Patterns project, the Waspie Corset Belt. I am eager to sew with more luxurious fabrics than quilting cottons (though I love working with quilting cottons!) and a couple smaller projects are a great place to start really getting into them. I will detail all my projects here as they come up!