Handmade Thursday - Look what I made! Plus a Dylon Giveaway

I'm very excited about my link up to White Lily Green's Handmade Thursday - this week.  You may have seen that I recently managed to snaffle some rather cool Alexander Henry fabric at a car boot sale and I wanted to make this into a dress for Ruby.

Well, despite my sewing classes this year, I still haven't tackled anything more complicated than a cushion, so I decided to have a dry run first.

I popped into my local sewing shop and bought some pretty cotton fabric at about £5 for a metre.  I also bought a sewing pattern for the most simple shift dress I could find.

With much help from my mum - including borrowing her sewing machine; scissors; thread; cotton... etc as my stash is all in boxes in storage, here's what I managed to come up with.

Yes - of course I was tempted

Ruby is most happy with it.  I couldn't resist adding a few yo-yos and buttons to jazz it up a bit.

I have to say, I'm pretty pleased with myself.  It's not perfect. It's a bit ruckled round the arm-holes and although I followed the pattern for a 4 year old, it has come out very 'tenty' at the back.  But even so, given it's my 1st attempt at making a whole garment, cutting from a pattern and using bias binding, I think it's pretty damned good!

As regular readers will know, this week marks my blog's 1st birthday. To celebrate I'm hosting a whole week of giveaways (each one is open for a week, so you can scroll back through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday's post and still enter those).

Sticking with the fabricky theme, I'm very pleased to have joined forces with Dylon for today's competition.  Myself and Ruby love using Dylon's products, and I've featured many of them here on the blog, including their Machine Dyes used in my crocheted doily bowl tutorial; the Image Maker used on cushion covers; and Ruby's artistic creations with  Fabric paints and  Pens.

Dylon products are available nationwide from haberdashery and craft stores, department stores and branches of Wilkinsons and Dunelms.

Dylon are giving one lucky blog reader the chance to win a bundle of their products to get crafty with. To enter, simply visit their website and leave a comment here stating which of their craft products you'd most like to try - and maybe what you'd do with it or which is your favourite dye colour and what item you'd use it for.

For and extra entry, please tweet the following and leave a separate comment here saying that you have done so: " I'm entering @missielizzieb's blog competition to win a @DyetoDye crafty prize here http://bit.ly/pscv0E"

This competition is open to UK entrants only. The winner will be chosen at random from all entries received by 8pm Thursday 18th August 2011. The prize will be fulfilled by Dylon.

Don't forget to check my posts daily this week - there is a birthday giveaway bonanza going on!

Disclosure: Many thanks to Dylon for supplying the prize.