Sewing Bee!!!

OH MY GOSH!!! I'm so excited!!!!! At the end of August I saw that patternreview.com was gearing up to host their yearly sewing bee. This year I took a closer look and saw that it is a competition and decided that sounded like fun. Last week I submitted my entry and...I'M MOVING ON TO THE SECOND ROUND!!! I'm super happy about it! This was my submission:

One of the more intriguing things about the Sewing Bee is the element of surprise. Each of the four rounds has its own theme. Those themes are kept under wraps until it's time to start sewing. Fun, right? The first round's theme was a pencil skirt inspired by a piece of music or a musician. It took me far less time than I expected to come up with my inspiration. I went with "I'm Coming Out" by Diana Ross. I chose that song because it's about breaking out of your shell and that's the visual I get with this pattern.

Doesn't the neon pink piping make it look like there's something light and bright getting ready to jump out from under the black? That's what I think it looks like. The pattern I used got a lot of love from the other entrants too. There were ten of us out of the 111 entrants who used Vogue 8750 as their pattern.

Part of the judging criteria was creativity. I thought the piping was fairly creative. Then I saw the other entries. My first thought was, "Well...looks like I'm going to have to up my game." There were some really wonderful entries.

On the other hand, I really did feel like I could hold my own with my sewing skills. There are a lot of seams in this skirt and nearly all of them have piping in them. Let me rephrase that: nearly all of the seams have perfect piping in them. And that invisible zipper is nothing to sniff at, either. I'm so glad it all translated over. Still, I wouldn't have been surprised to find that I hadn't made it to the next round. Those other entries were really well done.

We were given word this morning that the 60 entrants to move on from the original 111 had been selected. I was so pleased to see I was on that list! Now I wait impatiently until tomorrow morning to see what the theme is for round 2!