Secret Garden

This week I set myself up with a little challenge!

Instead of coming up with a design and then going and buying what I need, I would only be able to use what I already had!

Sounds easy???

Not quite!

Coming up with ideas every week is hard enough. But I also wanted to stay away from black and white, seeing as the last couple of blogs I have shown have been black and white.

Now I don’t have a major stockpile of Lycra, so my choices are quite limited. However I decided to go with the colour lilac. What adds to the difficulty of this challenge is that I don’t have a full piece of material. When you make a leotard 40cm of 150cm wide Lycra is plenty to do the job, nevertheless the piece I had was about 100cm and had a piece already cut out of it. :(

So this is where you have to employ your problem solving skills! Think of it as a puzzle! Then it’s not so daunting…

Some tips when trying to cut your pieces out when you don’t have a lot of material!

• Planning is a must! Don’t cut anything till you have mapped it all out or even tried it out.

• The crutch and the leg bands are the two most important parts, as they are the longest/ widest parts that have to stay as a whole.

• You can put a seam down the centre of the bottom, if there isn’t enough material for one whole piece.

• Some panels you might have to cut out individually, this does mean extra cutting, but it’s the best way to make the most of your material.

My inspiration for this leotard is florals, and I would like it to resemble a garden in abstract way! So I want little puffs of material to resemble flowers, plus lace flowers and leaves.

It won’t truly look like a garden as such (no green leaves or vines); I just want it to be a vision to the idea.

Today I have broken away from the silver glitter and have gone gold. I think the gold gives the leotard that added dimension and works well with the fuchsias and dark purples colours embellishments.

The Final Product!

I am actually really happy with how this leotard turned out! It was a little bit of a struggle in more ways than one. However my garden vision has turned out a lot better than I expected.

xx