ASG Chicago Chapter 27th Annual Fashion Show and Luncheon

Sew Surprising was the name for this years annual fashion show and luncheon which was so surprising since we hardly had any communication about the event at all! It was like Sew Surprising was kept a as a great big secret.

My very good friend Wendy and I at the luncheon.

This is only my second year being a member so I only have last year to compare to and let me tell you there was a big difference in the level of communication. Unfortunately it had a direct impact on both the attendance of the event and the number of fashion show entries. It was a bit disappointing to see. Less than 100 people in attendance and a grand total of 38 garments... come on, this is Chicagoland.

Any way...Those of us that were there made the most of it and enjoyed ourselves!

I had 3 garments entered in this years show. 2 of which have already been blogged about.
First up was my Yellow jacket and Floral skirt (blogged about here) that I made for Princess Victoria's 2nd birthday and baptism.

The 2nd was my Sneaker corner dress adapted from vogue 1404. (blogged about here) I made this from fabric purchased at the July ASG National Conference in Indianapolis.

The last outfit was part of the Sew Chicago Neighborhood Group Challenge which was to make a button down shirt with collar, cuffs, button closure and one embellishment. In my case the embellishment was contrasting fabric. If you hop over to the Sew Chicago blog you can see the other participants entries.

For my entry I used Simplicity 3684 as my starting point. The fabric is from Emmaonesock. 'Sit, Stay' poly crepe woven, still available here and the black contrasting rayon was from my fabric collection. I made several changes to the pattern after making a muslin the biggest was changing the sleeve to 2 piece sleeve. I will do a full blog post on this soon. I also used my A-line skirt pattern to create a new skirt. This one is a double layer of an over-dyed black rayon woven done with a rolled hem, lapped zipper and waistband.

I also had a garment entered in the fabric challenge. Each year there is a fabric challenge and this year it was a polyester print. I had some challenges with this fabric. One we only had a small piece and it had the tendency to run and to fray :( Due to those challenges I decided to use a pattern where I could ruche the fabric which helped to hide the flaws.
I actually had a lot of fun doing this challenge! It pushed me outside my box and let me experiment to come up with something fun and unique. You can read all about my challenge garment and see pictures of it and it's sister shirt here.

Hopefully next year has a better turnout!