Sewing challenge ahoy!

Well, voting for the Typography Challenge finishes at the end of the month, and over at Ricochet and Away, Rikka has already revealed the latest challenge: "I Will Wear it in Public!", a garment sewing challenge.
The challenge this time around is to sew a new (or refashioned) article of clothing that you would proudly wear in public, and to try something new in the process.

For me, the 'try something new' part is probably the biggest challenge, since all the things I haven't tried out are pretty daunting to me--shirts, shirring and corsetry are some that come to mind!

Admittedly I tried shirring before, but it really didn't work. I don't quite understand why--I used a brand new reel of shirring elastic, wound it onto the bobbin by hand, etc, but the bobbin case just shredded it! Absolutely must figure this one out! (If anyone has any suggestions why, I'd greatly appreciate some advice!)

Corsetry is out of the question for this challenge, simply because I think it would cost too much (money-wise and sanity-wise!) Maybe when I'm feeling braver, and haven't got a long 'to make' list!

Shirt-making is something I've kind of done before, in a sense that I made a rather shapeless shirt using the top half of a dress pattern, and ad-libbed a lot of it. I also managed to rip a hole in the shirt whilst opening the button holes. Oops. Lucky it was just for a fancy dress costume!

So at the moment, I'm leaning towards shirring, or maybe smocking. Otherwise I'll consult my retro craft books for inspiration!