Pinterest Challenge: Beach Towel Dress

It's Pinterest Challenge time! Y'all know I love me some Pinterest, and I always love the Pinterest Challenge put on by the lovely Bower Power and Young House Love. This season's challenge is also hosted by Centsational Girl and Ten June. This is my third challenge to participate in. Previously I made a Christmas Ornament out of a wedding invitation and a couple of fun pillows for my couch. For this installment, I wanted to do something summery, and I wanted to do one of the projects I had already bought the materials for. Confession, I pin things, I buy the materials to get them done, then I quickly move on to pinning more things before I actually make things. It's a cycle.

I started by looking through my pin boards, then at the materials I had already bought. Here is my inspiration:

Source

She had some pretty simple sounding directions. Being that I am an intermediate sewer at best, I thought I could do this. But, I have never used elastic thread, and I didn't really know what "shirring" meant. (It's when you make the fabric bunchy/stretchy in a cute way.) So after I pulled out my sewing machine, my cute beach towel, and some elastic thread, I Googled shirring and found this fantastic tutorial on how to shir fabric. But really, it was super easy. 


Basically you are just sewing straight lines the long way down the towel, back stitching at the beginning and end of each row. Really the important part is to hand wind your bobbin with the elastic thread. I had to wind my bobbin about 5 or 6 times during the whole process.

This is my artistic talent at its finest. This is a towel.

I shirred about 35 rows. In the tutorial she has the row marked with a fabric pen first. I thought that was too much work, so I just used my presser foot as a guide. When your done, spray and press. 

This is where I kind of got lost. She said "sew up the side seams and add straps." Hmm. Sew up the side seams? I decided the best way to do this was to pin the two short edges and sew a straight line, basically making a big tube with my towel. I didn't take a picture of it, but if you squeeze your eyes closed, you can probably picture it.


For the straps, I found some coordinating terry cloth fabric. and cut two pieces to 4" wide and 20" long.

Another fabulous rendition of fabric.

Fold one in half hot dog (2x20) and sew a seam. Turn it inside out and do the same with the second strap.

Next attach the straps. I put the towel tube on and pinned the straps where I liked them. I attached them with a zig zag stitch because I am fancy.

I wore my creation this weekend when we went to the coast for the day. It will for sure be in my suitcase when we head to Kauai next month.

I really like how it turned out. This is the first wearable item I have made. While I was sewing it, I just kept telling myself that this is a cover up, not a wedding dress so mistakes weren't that big of a deal. (Although, I don't think I made too many mistakes.)

Do you sew? What did you make for the Pinterest Challenge?