How to Transfer Your Rhinestone Design to Your Dress

Are you ready to glue rhinestones on your country or ballroom dancing, artistic roller or figure skating dress?

Adding rhinestones to a competition dance or skate costume is one of the last steps in finishing a dress you made, or bought and plan to re-design.

Rhinestones and other decorations can also be an important step in blinging out a bargain dress that has little or no stones.

Either way, rhinestones, sequins, payettes and other sparkling bits make a huge impact on how your competition dress will look – and equally important, is how you feel wearing the dress.

Look at the three dance and skate dresses in this image.  All three were made by members in my online sewing school.  They all have intricate rhinestone patterns that require a unique strategy for creating and applying the designs.

Which raises the big question:

How do you transfer your rhinestone design to the dress so your idea comes to sparkling life?

Sketching rhinestone patterns can be lots of fun.  After all, there are thousands of inspiration ideas on our Sew Like A Pro™ Instagram and Pinterest boards.

But transferring your bling design to your dance or skate costume is a different story.

If you are a starter instead of a finisher, you probably hate the process of marking out a rhinestone pattern on your dance or skate dress, because it can be very tedious.  If you want your dress to be competition-quality, it is important to have a rhinestone design that flatters your figure and looks professionally crafted.  Rushing the rhinestoning is not a great idea if you want it to look top quality.

Today’s video (see it below) is an excerpt from one of the Dressmaker Q&A coaching calls  that I host as a part of my online sewing school.  One of my sewing school members, Liddy, asked about strategies for transferring a rhinestone pattern to a dress.

Fortunately, there are several different methods you can use to mark out your design.  Take a look at this cool template made by one of my Sew Like A Pro™ members, Linda R, who makes dresses for a Dancesport high school team in southern California.

 Which type of rhinestone design do you want to create? 

How you mark your rhinestone pattern on your dress depends on what kind of rhinestone pattern you are using.

1. Linear Rhinestone Patterns

Linear rhinestone patterns are very easy to mark out, because you can draw the lines directly onto your dress using measuring tapes or strips of ribbon as the guides.

Sew Like A Pro™ DRESSMAKER TIP #1

For the green ballgown on the right, I used a fresh disappearing pen to draw many, many lines on all portions of the dress while it was on the dress form. … “on the dress form” is the key phrase.  When working on women’s costumes, we cannot do detail work flat because we have curves that must be worked around.

The upper portion of the leotard, I “eyeballed” to get the lines as close to my preferred spacing while adjusting for the bust curves.  Notice how the lines closest to the breasts curve a bit and the spacing is a little further apart?  There is no way around that on a curvy body.

For the zig zag area, I drew two straight lines indicating where I wanted the zig zags to be.  I made a short, paper zigzag template that I placed over the straight, asymmetrical lines, and then drew the zigzags so I knew exactly where to glue the rhinestones.

For the hip area, I used a 1″ or 25mm wide elastic to create the lines.  I pinned the elastic to the leotard and traced on either side of it.  I then measured a wider distance on either side of the elastic (maybe 2″ or 4 cm wide) and placed another elastic strip to create the next line.  More than likely, I used the same elastic piece and kept moving it over and over.

Sprinkles on the skirt, you can draw with a purple pen or “eyeball” it for the spacing.

Click here to go to my blog on how one figure skater created her own diamond rhinestone pattern.

2. Lace Rhinestone Patterns

Often, the easiest way to create an elaborate rhinestone design is to rhinestone lace or appliqués and simply follow what you see.  The lace creates the pattern, so you don’t have to worry about marking out lines for the rhinestones.

Take a look at this stunning Country dance dress made by Sew Like A Pro™ member Tamara, who in Texas, U.S.A.  Notice how she followed the contours of the blue lace with the rhinestones?  The only extra stoning she did was to add "sprinkles" to the areas of the dress that do not have lace.  Simple and beautiful.  How can you go wrong?

To create a lace rhinestone design, simply pin the lace on your dress and move it around until you get the look you want.  Take pictures so you can compare designs, like the sleeves below.

Of course, if the lace is on the bodice, you cannot look at it flat.  You must pin the lace to the leotard or the dress while it is on the dress form.  Then look in the mirror to make sure it is a pattern you like before trying it on yourself or your client.

Once you have settled on the lace placement, you can sew it or glue it to the dress or sleeves and then begin gluing on rhinestones.  Check out this blog which features hours of gluing lace and rhinestones compressed down to only a 12-minute video.

3. Abstract or artistic rhinestone design

For people who think they are not creative, curvy shapes and artistic rhinestone designs are often the most difficult.

For artistic designs, draw the pattern on the dress with a disappearing pen while it is on the dress form, like you would with a linear pattern.  Then take pictures to see if the design you drew is the right size or not.  You can also pin scrap pieces of fabric onto the dress to mark your different shapes.

For example, if you were designing a rose pattern like the design on the skate dress below, you could cut out petal shapes from scrap fabric and pin them onto dress.  Then take photos and see if the size proportion is correct.  Use the same color fabric as what your rhinestones will be so you get a more clear idea of what the final design will look like.

Click here to see the blog featuring this figure skating dress.

Sew Like A Pro™ DRESSMAKER TIP #2

The size of the rhinestone pattern should be relative to the size of the body.  Why?  If the pattern is too small it is a weak focal point.  If the pattern is too large it can over power the woman.  Know that you may end up changing your original sketch so that it is more proportionate to the woman wearing the dress, and therefore most figure-flattering.

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 Use stencils to draw rhinestone patterns 

Stencils can also be very helpful for transferring a rhinestone design to your dress.  If you have a lot of repeating shapes, or you have a shape that is very difficult to draw, stencils are the way to go!  There is a wide selection of crafting stencils you can buy online.  Or, you can get blank quilting stencils and poke holes for the rhinestones or cut your own designs.  If you want to get really fancy, create your own stencil patterns using plain card stock you purchase at your local office supply store.

The fun thing about stencils is that you easily move them around and mark different areas to find the best placement for your rhinestone design no matter what shape and size the person is.

Happy rhinestoning!

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