Fabric Mart Contest Entry

FINISHED!  You can see from this picture just how happy I am to have finally finished the first FABRIC MART contest challenge which was to make something out of scraps, unusual materials, or things you would have thrown away.    There were times this week when I thought maybe I had "bitten off more than I could chew" but trudged through to the end.

There will be MORE PICTURES of the finished outfit at the end but I'm first going to share my process as I created this "recycled" project:

I have quite a collection of leftover remnants and scraps from my years of sewing and selected the following items from my bags:

                                                                        

Fabrics starting on the left, mostly less than a yard each:
1.black Shetland wool from FABRIC MART which I previously felted, left over from a coat I made.
2.Icky green pure polyester double knit that could be left from the 70's.
3.Shiny poly print in sort of the same colors

4. "Skirt length" remnant of grey men's tropical weight wool but not enough for MY skirts.

5. Blue wool knit jersey from FABRIC MART which I had foolishly "felted", resulting in a fuzzy, uneven texture (didn't have the heart to throw it away!)
6 A scrap of black leather, from a barrel at the outlet where it was sold by the pound.

A cowl neck tee which I had made from some nice FABRIC MART knit and ruined with a drop of bleach.

Some curtain rings and other drapery stuff sold on the sale table at the outlet. Stay tuned---this will become JEWELRY!

I decided that I wanted to make a dress combining the currently trendy techniques of color-blocking and leather insets.  Finally found this pattern that used small enough portions of each fabric:

It had plenty of color-blocking on both front and back

It took me a whole day to cut out the pattern. Because there were so many different weights of fabric, I underlined them all with a soft knit interfacing (39 pieces!)

I painted the curtain rings with a light coating of metallic paints to match my outfit, and took off the extra hardware with plyers to make them into bracelets and a necklace

Then I was ready to sew!  I usually make zany, flowy outfits and had almost forgotten all the alterations necessary to make a fitted garment fit MY body perfectly. My friend Shams (who is also in this contest) couldn't believe that I was making a traditional garment (though we were pretty secretive with each other and didn't give too much away about our projects---can't wait to see her entry!)

After much sewing, ripping, fitting, pressing and sweating I finally finished the last stitch very late last night and rushed out this morning to take pictures.  Here are many views of my garment:

Here are closeups of the leather inserts and liningand of my bracelets and matching fingernail polish!

Fabric Mart should have pictures of all the entries up on their blog soon so keep checking their site ( Fabric Mart ) to see them all. I can't wait to see all the creations! Oh, and be sure to vote for your favorite to show support and appreciation to FM for having this fun contest.

Now to clean up all the fabric scraps and get ready for the next challenge---SEW ON!