I didn’t do a Halloween costume this year (check out last years’ costume here), but hopefully this makes up for it.

Here at Charity Shop Chic towers, any excuse for fancy dress goes! My friend J, who is American, hosted a party a few weeks ago to celebrate living in the UK for 7 years. The Anglo-American dress code was ‘red, white and blue’, which gave us a lot of scope… obviously I wanted to go as something British. Something patriotic. And something red, white and blue…

For raw materials I selected this rather boring blue men’s shirt from the British Heart Foundation shop in Balham. I paid £2.99.

The shirt itself is quite a heavy synthetic material which has a wierd texture to it.

With this project I am also taking part in the Sew2Pro Pattern Magic challenge, in which we are attempting different makes from any of the three ‘Pattern Magic’ books by Tomoko Nakamichi. I have been a fan of the books for a long time but have not had any success with the really rather complex patterns thus far, so it’s got to be time to give it another shot.

I’m attempting what looks like one of the easiest patterns in the book – ‘Like a Jungle’. It divides the front bodice into four overlapping segments.

Can you guess what I’m going to do with this? That’s right – a Union Jack!

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