Day 151: I’ve got the music in me

Let me just start by saying this is a picture heavy post for me.  So be warned it may take a minute or two to load everything.  As promised, a very long awaited sponsor day has arrived!  Today’s sponsor is the amazingly talented and bride to be, Becky from Sew and So.   Becky is so talented in fact that she recently finished sewing her own wedding dress.  I am looking forward to seeing the finished gown.  Becky is a music teacher and, appropriately so, picked the theme of music.

Let me tell you, I had a heck of a time with this theme.  It took me several weeks to decide what direction I wanted to go with.  I couldn’t decide between my favorite music, iconic musical decade looks like the 80’s or 50’s or 70’s, show choir since that is my job…there were just so many ways to pick from.

In the end I decided since Becky is a musical teacher, sheet music had to be incorporated.  I decided to make a circle skirt covered in “aged” sheets of music.  The skirt is not  quite a full circle as it started to get to big around to be able to move in.  Each sheet was “aged” by soaking it in tea and coffee grounds for many many hours and then letting them air dry.  This gave them each a unique color and crinkly look.  I cut my pattern pieces out of fusible interfacing and applied each sheet of music to the pieces individually.  Any edges that overlapped I machine stitched down to hold into place.  This also added a little more stability to the pattern pieces.

Once they were all stitch together, I stitched in a 6-7″ zipper in my sideseam.  That’s right I put a zipper into a paper skirt!  I also stitched black double fold bias tape that was left over from my raincoat project to the waist and hem of the skirt.  It provided the perfect contrast to the skirt.

 This is from work this morning.  Just to prove that I really did wear this out in public and did not sit at home all day in my lovely new getup.  I even went to the library in it.  The girls I work with loved it!  They may think I am a little kooky now between this and all the crazy leggings this month but I am okay with that.  Creative people are supposed to be a little weird right?  I

 On a final note, what I wore under the skirt is just as awesome.  Both of these pieces were sewn last night and are entirely from stash fabrics.  The leggings are my final Funky Pants Friday creation for Me Made May.  You cannot see it very well in this picture, but the others show the holographic foil dots a little better.  These like all the other leggings I have made used 1 yard of fabric.  I decided pretty late last night that the musical skirt needed petticoat of sorts underneath it.  While the skirt sticks out well on its own, I wanted something underneath to fill it in.  Twelve yards of red tulle later and I was ready to be a Disney Princess.

Thank you Becky for making this day happen! I had a blast in this today and I hope you enjoy it too.