How to Make Shell Pasties

Back in May we were very excited to find out that we could be part of a Hawaii Show being produced for this year’s Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend, which would be a 48-hour virtual show. The plan for the show, which was produced by the Shimmy & Shake from the Aloha State, Miss Catwings, was to showcase the beauty of Hawaii.

We were so excited to be part of BHOF (or VHOF as it was for 2021) that we called in some favors (a boat, a pro videographer, a dive master, and some frequent flyer miles) to create “The Bare Necessities” or I referred to it “Burlesque on a Boat”. The idea for the number is that Cabaret & Cocktails lives on a boat and tours doing burlesque – we had our Bare Necessities: boat, booze, and burlesque.

We added in a merman and decided to end in shell pasties.

I made the pasties and Lily O Lei did the rhinestoning. After some experimenting, this is the pattern I came up with. Download Shell Pastie Pattern PDF

I used buckram as my base and added some quilting batting to give it some dimension. I topstitched the lines to create the ridges of the shell. Here’s some pics as to how I put them together – I actually made them with extra fabric from my wedding dress.

Traced the pattern onto the buckram:

Buckram, batting, and fabric will be sewn together (I cut out the center triangle of the batting since that is not really needed):

Topstitched (quilting) the pieces together:

The center triangle in the pattern is the part that overlaps to create the pastie shape. I cut the buckram and the fabric on opposing side to have fabric to fold over the buckram edge. I topstitched the closure:

I folded the raw edges over and handstitched in place (the bottom I was able to sew along the existing topstitching with the sewing machine):

I used vinyl as the lining of the shell pasties cut in kind of a general shape and glued them in place:

Pasties, pre-rhinestones:

Finished shell pasties:

Hope you got to see our epic boat adventure during the Hawaii Edition of VHOF!