A dress made out of of loom bands has been sold for more than $290,000 on online auction site eBay.

Helen Wright, a single mother from Wales, who only expected around $85 for her loom band dress, got quite the shock last Tuesday after she found out that her eBay listing for her loom band dress attracted more than 100 bidders, ending up at a final offer of $290,000, according to the Huffington Post.

The dress was made by her best friend, Katherine Burnand, who braved through her arthritis to finish the dress. According to HuffPost, the loom band attire consisted of more than 20,000 loom bands and was painstakingly stitched for almost 48 hours. Helen then placed a listing for the dress on eBay and had her 12-year-old daughter model for the colorful dress. According to Helen, the original $85 she indicated for the dress was just enough to cover the cost of the dress and for a small profit. Little did she know that the loom dress would be able to pay for her son’s car and her month’s rent.

In an interview with the North Wales Daily Post, Wright revealed the events that occurred before hitting the eBay lottery yesterday.

“My friend Katherine physically made it because she’s out of work and gets bored. “I said why don’t we make a dress from loom bands and Katherine said she’d be happy do do it because she’s too ill to work. “She did an hour here or there in between her house work to keep her busy. It took her about 45 hours to make but that was over weeks and weeks.

Wright explained the meticulous process involved in the making of the loom band dress:

“She made it by running one long strip of loom bands then got one of Sian’s dresses and laid them both on the floor and got the pattern from there.”

According to Wright, the two friends spent more than $50 on the loom bands packets they used for the dress. Wanting to get back the costs and earn a little money on the side, the two decided to list the dress on eBay. A few hours and hundreds of bidders later, what they expected to be just a bit over $85 turned into a whopping $290,000 – more than enough to buy Kate Middleton’s entire wardrobe.

“Last night we checked Ebay and thought it was a joke when we saw it had gone over £100,000.”

Wright and Burnand will split the money 50/50, according to the Daily Mail. Wright, who lost his husband and business a few years ago, could not contain her happiness over the ludicrous purchase:

“I’m still in shock and I can’t believe it. I still won’t believe it until the money’s in the bank”.

Although it is still unclear if the bidder will actually pay for the loom band dress, eBay terms of agreement mandates winning bidders to pay for the items they purchase.

[Images from eBay]