advanced_sewing: chiffon changeant, shot chiffon, two-tone chiffon ...

A couple of years ago I was browsing eBay for fabric (as one does). One day I came across a most wonderful fabric. It was an emerald green shot chiffon. Deep and rich and with the subtle extra iridescence that the slight two-tone effect gave it, it was just beautiful. It was also something silly like $3/m, so I bought some. Now to this day I have no idea why, but I only bought 3m of the stuff. It is plain (french) weave polyester chiffon, green threads on the warp and black on the weft (I presume that way around!). The warp has a higher thread count that the weft so the green colour is much stronger than the black. It has been sitting in my stash since then while I figured out something do to with it. I love deep green, because I have dark green eyes (well, I have one dark green eye anyway). What I really want is a beautiful evening gown, but I don't have enough fabric for that. *sob* I don't really like to wear satin (don't think it's terribly flattering personally!) and having seen this fabric, ordinary chiffon just doesn't cut it any more. So I am left with the unenviable task of trying to source similar fabric. Why unenviable, you wonder? Surely simple shot chiffon should not be too hard to find? You would think that, but not so. My first problem is that why I would call shot chiffon seems to go by several different names - 'chiffon changeant' seems to be the proper name but I have also seen it called 'two-tone chiffon', 'iridescent chiffon', 'two-tone chiffon' as well as the obvious 'shot chiffon'. My second problem is that I live in the UK, which seems to be the final frontier when it comes to sourcing decent fabric. Most of the fabric here seems to fall into two types - not great quality and stupidly overpriced (c.f. 45'' acetate lining on sale at major department store for - wait for it - £6/m) or very high quality couture fabrics that cost major ££££ (we're talking £30/m for chiffon here, and I sadly can't justify that kind of expense!) I second the idea of using your existing fabric for either a blouse, or as an accent to another, heavier material. For example, a chiffon overlay on either the skirt or the bodice of a dress could be very attractive. Or, what about a jacket over a sleeveless (or bustier-type) sheath dress? I understand your reluctance to use satin, but what about something like a silk dupioni in a complementary shade?