I was in need of a quick and easy project to take a break from hand-stitching my wedding dress and boost my mojo. Also, my sewing space was in desperate need of tidying, so I thought if I covered it in sequins I would HAVE to tidy it.
My sister-in-law's hen party in July has a 'summer festival' theme (I'm unclear as to exactly what this means!) so I thought I'd work on an outfit for that.
The fabric is from Minerva. It's a mesh, with stretch in one direction, covered in lines of plastic sequins and then a floral fabric printed on top. I've only seen this once technique once before, on an extortionately-priced Liberty 'special base'.
I was a bit put off by the amount of plastic, but as it is deadstock, I felt justified buying it. (Although I am aware that the sustainability/environmentally-friendly-ness of deadstock is highly debatable.)
As I did not want the stretch, I mounted it on a pale pink cotton lawn, which really makes the colour pop. I just machine-tacked the edges (I would usually attach underlining by hand) and it worked fine with this fabric. I also spray-painted my buckles gold.
I used my third-best scissors and cut straight through the sequins. They also went through both machine and overlocker extremely easily. I added 8cm of width so I didn't need any sort of zip/buttons on the sides and added in-seam pockets.
I machine-understitched the facing as far as possible and just left the bits I couldn't reach! The hem is a machine-blind hem.
I was going to say this was a project without any hand stitching, but I did hand-stitch my 'handmade by Charlotte' label to the facing, as I wanted to stitch it in black, and I couldn't be bothered to rethread my machine. Other than that, no hand-stitching, and I completed the whole project in one day. And them cleaned up all the sequins the next morning...
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