Lucky Lantern

I almost can’t believe it, but I won a competition! A competition run by an Australian fabric store, no less!

Although Facebook ads creep me out a lot, I still click on some of them, when they’re relevant to my interests. That’s how I found Lucky Lantern. I had a browse through their fabrics, and noticed they were doing a giveaway, if you filled out a survey. So I did, and promptly forgot about it – until the lovely Michelle contacted me and said I’d won! I got to pick out 4 different fabrics for her to send me, and I had no trouble doing that, there are so many gorgeous prints! They just arrived in the mail the other day, and I got half a metre of each fabric. I can’t wait to start crafting with them, I already have my eye on the Mini Tote pattern over at Shiny Happy World!

My first dress!

This week, I made my very first item of clothing! To be fair, I didn’t make it from scratch – I used a large scarf/wrap that my mother-in-law brought back from her travels last year. It’s made from gorgeous fabric, but it just didn’t suit me as a scarf, so I repurposed it. I didn’t want to use a zip or anything (yup, still scared of zips!) so I decided to shirr it. I found lots of tutorials online (one of which I have linked to in this week’s Sunday Spotlight), and I already had some elastic thread, so I had everything I needed.

First of all, I took my measurements, so I knew what I was working with. I cut my scarf into two pieces – front and back of the dress. If I did it again, though, I’d do it all in one piece to make it easier. I worked on the premise that shirring the fabric would roughly halve it, which is what I read online. In reality, it only reduced it by about a third, so I had to adjust my other piece of fabric quite a bit in order for the dress to fit me. The shirring process was easy – I wound the elastic thread around my bobbin quickly, without thinking about it too much, and used regular black thread for the top thread. I didn’t mark lines on my fabric, I just lined it up with my sewing machine foot. I went through about 4 bobbins of elastic thread, and I still had some leftover, so it was pretty economical in that regard. Once I was done shirring, I sewed the other piece of fabric to the shirred piece, and I was done! I was lucky because the shawl/scarf was already hemmed on the top and bottom, so I didn’t need to do that.

The fabric of the scarf made it a little difficult to work with – it was quite slippery and woven, so I had to deal with it moving around a lot and unravelling slightly as I worked. If I did it again, I’d definitely line it, as well. But it ended up looking pretty good, and I’m proud of myself for finally finishing an article of clothing!