The Rambo Project gets girly.

If you've been hanging out in blogland lately, then you've probably already heard the scoop about The Rambo Project, by Seamstress Erin. Basically, she has the coolest friend ever, who had an in with a costume department, and handed over some old costumes from Rambo III! Awesome, right?!! She sent around a few turbans that were worn in the actual movie by the terrorist bad guys, and our challenge was to turn our turbans into wearable garments.

And here is mine! Can you spot the turban?

Here's a hint... My turban started out as a relatively small piece, only around 10 inches wide and maybe a yard long. The stripes were all concentrated on one end, and were a bit irregular, so that added to the cutting challenge. I really wanted to maximize the stripes!

I decided to highlight the stripes by making them the focal point of the yoke of the Sewaholic Gabriola maxi skirt, which is totally made for stripes!

I only had enough stripe for the front yokes, so the back is the solid taupe that made up most of the length of the turban. And hey, no stripe matching at the side seams!

I did match up the stripes at the front yoke, which was actually a bit tricky, since the turban fabric was weirdly stretchy and also a bit irregular. I persevered though, and I am glad I did!

Since clearly I was not going to get an entire skirt out of the teeny shreds of turban I had left after cutting the yoke, I knew this was going to require a second fabric. But these aren't colors that are dominant in my wardrobe, so at first I really didn't know where I wanted to go with it. I decided to just drape the turban over my fabric shelves and see what worked. It fell on this floral, which I wouldn't have thought of, but the colors are perfect.

So I pulled out the floral and found that it is a stretch linen with roughly the same stretch and weight as the turban fabric! What are the odds! This fabric came in a mystery bundle from FabricMart. Such a win with this one! I did have to shorten the skirt a bit, since I only had 1 3/4 yards of my perfect floral linen. The end result, after taking of 6 inches at the cutting stage and then a few more when I evened the hem is a slightly above ankle length that I really like. I made this for kicks, but I am going to wear the heck out of it. And make more this length.

So, after the skirt was made, I realized that I had no tops to go with it. Fortunately, another FabricMart mystery bundle (can you tell I LOVE those?), had provided me with this lovely teal ITY, which is exactly the same color as the teal flowers in the linen print. Since Heather has been teasing us with all her lovely Nettie bodysuits, I decided to try my hand at one. But I didn't have the heart for PDF assembly, so I went with a pattern I already had, Jalie 2105 (now OOP).

Since the Jalie pattern is for a leotard, I did have to make a few adjustments. I left the crotch seam open and installed a snap placket there, and instead of elastic in the neckline, I used a self fabric band.

The low, scooped back makes me feel like a ballerina. A super sexy ballerina! The one thing that I would do different here, for next time would be to move the snap placket forward. It's placement is a bit, ahem, inconvenient as it is, although it is still comfortable to wear.

Overall, I'm pretty thrilled with my girlification of Rambo! Be sure to head over to Seamstress Erin's blog to check out the other ways that creative sewists have given new life to these old costumes.