Swim Suit Cover Up Contest

I've spent five days working on my entry to this contest to sew a swim-suit cover-up. The deadline passed and I failed not only to finish on time, but to create a wearable cover-up as well. The winners will be awarded a singer sewing machine or a dress form. I don't need either thing, but for some reason I felt very compelled to compete.

I started with this light blue pattern trial. So far, so good. Then I cut a longer version out of the nice fabric. I added a ruffle that began at the hip and ended mid-thigh. I wanted to add a waistband. I was going to put three rows of 1/4" elastic in because it would look so much better than a single casing. I spent hours considering how to accomplish this in the most efficient way. I got the first row in and the whole thing looked stupid. There was too much fabric in the center front - something that was not apparent when I was wearing the garment with elastic pinned around my waist. Somehow having it sewn in changed it completely. I ripped the bottom section off and will at some point just finish it as a top. I went on vacation and forgot about the contest until the day before the deadline. Suddenly I had a new idea. I could make a button front dress that could just be torn off in one beautiful motion before bounding into the water.

I tried some draping - just enough to establish that I'm not ready to work that way yet. This took half a day.

And then I made this. I added the button bands to an existing pattern. At this point I missed the deadline for the contest, but still believed the cover-up was going to work really well. Then I realized that the interfacing I used for the button bands was too stiff. It was an all-purpose woven pellon fusible. I started putting on the snaps. I've only done this one other time. You have to hammer them on with these special little tools. It didn't go well and I destroyed the top sections of three of the snaps after securing their counterparts on the other band. I had purchased the snaps years ago, god knows where, and had no extras. You can't remove them once they're on. I tried to solve this by sewing two visually related buttons on where the last snaps would be and since they couldn't be functioning at this point I had to just sew the button bands together from the last snap, down. I can still step into the dress.

Once I had it on and spent a little time in it I knew it was unwearable. That button band just curves in and out in terrible ways because of the stiffness. I really need to wear a belt with it to make it flattering, and that just causes more awkwardness with the band. I was telling this whole sad story to Scott and he said, well at least it will make a good blog post. People like to hear about how you mess things up.
And speaking of that - I did the laundry yesterday and washed his ipod which was in the pocket of his shorts.