Project Run and Play: Rachel from a Nest Full of Eggs Favorite Challenge

It's hard to believe that it has been almost four years since I was a contestant on Project Run and Play! Since the fall of 2012 I have continued to enjoy sewing and contributing to sewing books and magazines. For a little over two years now I have been a blog contributor and editor for the Oliver + S blog. During Season 5 my favorite challenge was the White Sheet Challenge because I used some of my favorite things: dyeing fabric, color blocking, and geometry.

For the White Sheet challenge we were invited to take a white sheet (up to king size) and make whatever we wanted out of it by painting it, dyeing it, embellishing it, etc. But the majority of the look had to be from the white sheet. I thought it would be fun to play with volume. But this look could easily be translated into a more wearable everyday clothing item, just take the idea and make a skirt at knee length, for example or let the bold stripes and long length inspire you, take some striped knit fabric, and sew a maxi dress like this awesome one.

The lines on this dress are not painted on, nor are they wide ribbons sewn on, it is all piecing. It was painstakingly pieced together out of solid purple and white strips, so that every seam and angle would match perfectly. I took part of the white sheet and dyed it with half a bottle of purple liquid dye. I cut 3 inch strips out of the white sheet and 2 inch strips out of the purple. The strips were sewn together, cut at 45 degree angles, then sewn back together to form 90 degree angles, then the modified circle skirt was cut out. From the remaining fabric I cut out the bodice pieces.

The skirt part of the dress has 60 pieces of fabric, arranged into perfectly perpendicular (90 degree) angled stripes, done in a half circle skirt (two quarter circle skirt sections where the front and back pieces are exactly the same) so that the lines go straight down on the sides (more perpendicular lines are found on both sides of the dress where the skirt lines hit the bottom bodice line). I even took extra care to make sure the width of the white strip was the same on the side seams as it was throughout the whole dress. Speaking of the side seams I added nice deep on seam side pockets. The entire dress is fully lined with white sheet fabric to hide all those carefully pressed open seams and to make it nice against the skin.