tunic tricks & giveaway treat!

Well hey y'all! How *you*? We've been watching Friday Night Lights for the second time through, and I just want y'all to know, I appreciatcha. I really do. Aaaa'ight? Before getting to the nitty gritty, I thought I might answer a few questions that came up about my tunic. Scroll on down if you just wanna know who won... 

First up! Those earrings! WHERE DID I FIND COORDINATING EARRINGS? I'd like to tell you I made them out of the tunic fabric, but no. However, I did kind of make them. I covered a pair of hoops (from "In The Heights," actually! They were my first pair of Vanessa hoops, before we moved on to a size I could put my fist through.)  I simply took some circular knit trim, slid it on, cut it, stitched it closed, et voila. Kind of like yarn bombing on a miniature scale.

That quick trick never would have flown with the tunic fabric. Like I said before, it unraveled the second it was cut. Some of you applauded my taming of the beautiful beast (thankya!), and I wanted to share a slightly more involved trick for this one. I found this crazyface pink weft interfacing at Steinlauf & Stoller (in NY's garment district) and bought 3 yards Just. Because: PINK WEFT INTERFACING. For this project, I cut yards & yards of 1" wide strips on the bias, and carefully fused them to all the cut edges before sewing the whole shebang together. Had no idea if it would work, like most of my ideas. It took forever. But the fray stopped there.

The body of the fabric was weighty enough on its own, but I did interface the bias cut placket as well. From the looks of this shot, it would seem I didn't go all the way, but what you're seeing is the right side SA of the placket attached to the trim, which has been trimmed. Har dee har har. As you can tell, the interfacing stopped any threat of loose yarn!

Thirdly, why yes.. that is lace used as seam tape. As I recall, I was getting bored of hug snug, and wanted something fancier to peek out of those side slits. My sis Mokosha sent me this purple cotton lace a few years back, and I thought this project was deserving of a strip of the hoarded yardage. I cut away one long edge, following the motif. The cut edges were handsewn to the woven fabric, which hid the stitches wonderfully. The woven fabric hails from the ever popular Kashi at Metro Textiles, but as it's over a year old, I'm pretty sure it's all gone...

Lastly: Yes, I'm pretty sure MJ is 13 feet tall. I fact checked it.

Now on to the winner! I counted comments (omitting my own & others replies, duplicate entires, and anyone who opted out), took that number on over to my man Rob, and tried to use him as a random number generator by asking him to pick a number between 1 and 162. It did not work, as it was immediately clear to me he was merely choosing the number of his favorite Steelers defensive back. SO! Computer chooses... number 27. Congrats to MJB! 

If you didn't win a copy and you want your own (and I highly recommended that you get one!) you can find it here on amazon (affiliate link) or over at C&T Publishing (non-affiliate). It's already in its second printing!!!

Well y'all, I'll be back on Friday wth another little something unexpected-- I mean, nothing as unexpected as Tammy's surprise at the end of Season 1, but still. Out of character, for sure. See y'all then aaaa'ight by'now!