| Sewing World magazine ran a competition in 2007 called ‘Eco-Restyling’. The challenge was to “turn something that’s old, unworn or unloved into something that’s worthy to wear now”.
The tent dress idea came to me at a very wet summer festival a couple of weekends before the competition deadline. A friend’s tent had let her down in the incessant rain and when I overheard the conversation she was having about whether to put it in the recycling or the landfill bin, something clicked and I pounced!
The dress was hurridly put together in a day as I had another project to do that weekend and still needed to do a quick photo shoot in the back garden so I could send pictures off to Sewing World before the deadline.
It was all worth it as I got an invitation as a finalist to model my dress at the NEC in Birmingham! I packed my welly boots, took some tent pegs for hair pins and paraded down the catwalk to win second prize in the over 26 category which I’m very proud about as the other entries were fantastic. |
