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Tried making a dress from thrifted bedsheets and it came out completely different than I planned
I found this old floral bedsheet at Goodwill for like $3 and thought it'd be a quick project for a summer dress... turned out the fabric had way more drape than I expected. The pattern I used was meant for stiffer cotton, so the whole thing just hangs real loose and flowy now. It actually looks kind of cool in a 70s boho way, not what I was going for at all. I learned you really gotta feel the fabric weight before you cut into anything, especially with cheap thrift finds. Ended up adding a tie belt to give it some shape, which saved the whole thing. Has anyone else had a project go totally sideways because of fabric choice?
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anna_carter5314d ago
Jumped right into that trap myself a few months ago. I read this tip online about holding fabric up to the light to see how loosely it's woven, and I still ignored it when I grabbed a slippery polyester from the thrift store for a dress pattern that needed stable cotton. That thing ended up so floppy it looked like a nightgown on me until I hacked six inches off the hem and added elastic at the waist. Seems like bedsheets are extra tricky too since they're almost always been washed a hundred times already.
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wadeg9214d ago
...and that's how you accidentally discover your new style, right? I mean, yeah, you totally saved it with the belt, but why do we always think we can just swap fabrics without the whole thing falling apart? I've done the same thing where I grabbed a rayon blend for a shirt pattern that called for quilting cotton and ended up with something that looked like a wrinkled curtain. Did you actually measure the bedsheet's weight or just guess by how it felt in your hand? Cause I swear half my failed projects came from eyeballing it.
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