Tag Archive | pretty summer splodges skirt

MMM14 comes to an end

This might turn out to be a long post! First of all, the final photo round-up, and then some thoughts on how Me Made May has worked out for me.

Day 28 – I do love this colour combination

The When Two Become One refashioned tee

The When Two Become One refashioned tee

I wore the refashioned t-shirt from day 1, with a plain black RTW pencil skirt.

Day 29

Another office selfie

Another office selfie

I wore the Blingalicious NotCardigan to work, with a completely different plain black RTW pencil skirt (I happen to like plain black pencil skirts). Thursdays are my half day, and by the evening I had changed, because I was off to la Belle France, for the weekend with my sisters. We were going on the overnight ferry, with a 3 hour car journey in the morning followed by an early afternoon appointment at the notarial office, so I needed to wear something that would be comfy for the car-rides, suitable for on the boat, and respectable enough for seeing the notaire. I also wanted to keep my packing simple, so I changed into…

Day 30 – What a scorcher!

 

A slightly blurry shot!

A slightly blurry shot!

I asked my 5-year-old niece to take this photo, so sorry for the blur!  It is, of course, the Pretty Summer Splodges skirt, teamed with a pink tee. The weather was scorchio!

Day 31 – And finally…

Yes, you've seen it before. A lot.

Yes, you’ve seen it before. A lot. And this one is by a 9-year-old niece. With bonus 11-year-old niece playing badminton in the background.

The return (yet again) of the hi-lo floral circle skirt. Because it was easy to pack, and it’s eminently suitable for summertime wearing. Also, bonus hair-flowers, which were also me-made.

And just for the sake of completeness, I can confirm I wore the Pretty Summer Splodges skirt on the journey home today, teamed with a white and black stripey slightly nautical-looking tee-shirt. I’m not normally one for La Mode Nautique, but it did seem quite fitting on the ferry!

And that’s it for Me Made May 2014.

 

My formal pledge was: “I will endeavour to wear something Me-Made five days a week for the duration of May 2014.” I had kept it limited, because I wasn’t sure I could manage more, but actually, I did far better than I had originally thought, and wore something me-made every single day of May. Furthermore, I managed to photo-document each outfit and post it to the MMM Flickr group, as well as here.

I didn’t find it difficult to wear me-made throughout the month. I deliberately try to ensure that what I make will be readily integrated into my regular wardrobe. I make cake, not frosting. Sometimes my cake may have interesting flavours and ingredients. There may even be frosting on the cake. But it’s still fundamentally cake. The things I make generally do get worn in my everyday life. So it wasn’t *too* much of a change to my wardrobe habits to stick to me-mades. It was sometimes a bit restrictive, because I don’t have all that many to choose from. Hopefully that will be less of an issue next time.

What I did find difficult was the photo-documentation. I found it interesting, but not easy to manage. I live on my own, in a flat that doesn’t have good natural light, with no full-length mirror (“It sounds so charming, Béa, you’re really selling it to us!”) So as you will have noted, photos generally tended to be selfies in our flats’ carpark, or in my office, unless there was someone I could reasonably persuade to take the shot for me (mainly the Gentleman Friend and various nieces). It got harder as the month progressed, and I’m sorry to note that I got more and more lazy about putting on makeup for the photos! I will make more of an effort next time.

But despite those reservations, you can see that I’m already talking about “next time”! I am really glad I did make the effort to photograph what I wore and post it on the flickr group, because the participation in that element of MMM was very community orientated, I became aware of a whole new range of sewing bloggers, and received some very positive and supportive comments from other MMM-ers.

In terms of appraising my own wardrobe, I’ve concretised (is that a word? It is now) some of the gaps I had previously been aware of. Meaning, while I knew I needed certain items in my wardrobe (e.g. I really need some tops) I now have a better idea of what sort of tops I need (e.g. I could really do with a plain white woven top, probably in a blouse or tunic style, and a plain black one ditto, and probably a red top of some description too). The other thing I need more of is jumpers and cardigans. I’m working on that, but knitting is slow! The Teal Slouchy Cardigan is a reasonable starting point, and I will probably make one more of these, with adaptations, possibly even two. But then I have to tackle the new-style in-the-round-top-down-circular-needles sewing that seems to be all the rage these days. I could really do with a plain black cardigan and another neutral one, in stone or camel maybe. I like cardigans, because they’re useful for layering, but I’ll be thinking of jumpers too. It would appear that Andi Satterlund’s Miette pattern is the generally accepted entry level version of these cardigans, but it’s too small for me and I’m not sure how to grade it up, so I’ll probably be trying Hetty, hopefully before the year is out. The other thing I’d like more of in my me-made wardrobe is dresses, two or three more in a range of styles would be nice. Dresses are easy to wear!

One thing that came out of the month’s photo-documenting of what I wore was how much I felt like I was letting the side down once it came to wearing repeats. Although I knew from the start that I would have to repeat, because I don’t have enough me-made in my wardrobe, and although I wore the repeats in different ways, it still felt like a let-down to the community. Which is ridiculous, really, because as one blogger (and I’m kicking myself for not keeping a note of who it was who said it) pointed out that actually it is totally normal to repeat which clothes you wear, that it’s normal that you wear your clothes in cycles. I also feel that MMM isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about all brand new shiny, it’s about how you integrate your me-made garments into your normal way of wearing the clothes you have at your disposal, as part of your normal everyday experience of getting dressed. Part of what I loved seeing other people wearing was how they styled one item in different ways. For me that’s part of wearing one’s me-mades in a creative way and making the best use of one’s wardrobe.

Which kind of leads on to thoughts about how Me Made May wasn’t supposed to be about making a whole load of new stuff to wear in May and show off to the sewing blog community, but nevertheless I did find myself inspired, excited, galvanised and encouraged by the warmth of the MMM community (and also by attending NYLon) to reboot my sewjo, which had been sadly lacking in the Winter months. MMM14 saw the completion of the Slouchy Teal Cardigan, the super-quick make of the Pretty Summer Splodges skirt and the commencement of the Crazy Swirly Skirt (which is still hanging up, and which I hope to check the hemline on tonight and hopefully complete it). I wouldn’t have got those projects to their present state without the kick-start of MMM14. Not that they were in any way a panicked or forced response to the strictures of MMM, it was definitely an organic part of the making process. I was just feeling the love!

I’d like to think that my me-mades are working towards a cohesive wardrobe overall. The Wardrobe Architect was a nudge towards this, but I stopped participating when it became clear that the aim was to work towards a Capsule Wardrobe. Although Capsule wardrobes are fascinating to me (in the same way that tiny living spaces are fascinating to me), it’s not something I wish to pursue for myself. I do wish to pursue a more integrated wardrobe though, so that my me-mades work together with each other and with my existing RTW clothing. I’m not aiming particularly for a wholly me-made wardrobe, though I have found myself buying less as I have made more, so it may be that as time progresses the balance of what clothing I’ve got will shift from RTW to me-made. But as I say, I want them to work together. So I’m going to be returning to a rule I created for myself when I was a teenager, to help me with Impulse Buys. The rule then was: If I can think of three things I could wear with this, I’m allowed to buy it. It wasn’t a hard and fast rule, sometimes I broke it, but in general terms it worked well. I need to apply the same rule now to what items I make, and further up the line, what fabric I buy, so that the stash is prepared for the Integrated Wardrobe. Hopefully this will mean that next year, when Me Made May comes around again, I’ll be more ready for it, and I’ll have a wider pool of garments to pick from and they’ll all work together really well! A girl can dream, can’t she?!

I would like to try and do one final MMM14 post, to round up a load of links to my new blog-crushes. That may happen, it may not, we’ll see.

MMM – it’s all skirts in this batch

Just a quickie, because we’re mostly on repeats now.

Day 19 – The Counterintuitive Black Bird Skirt

I'm still not fed up with this skirt- I love the birdies!

I’m still not fed up with this skirt- I love the birdies!

Day 20 – The Black Denim Skirt

Another view of my office

Another view of my office

Day 21 – The Minnie Mouse Skirt

It's a full circle!

It’s a full circle!

Day 22 – You’ve already seen the Pretty Splodges Summer Skirt

Here it is again

Here it is again

Pretty Summer Splodges Skirt

I finished hemming the skirt last night. Hooray, another thing for Me Made May!

The Pretty Summer Splodges skirt

The Pretty Summer Splodges skirt

And another shot, because I like it

And another shot, because I like it

 

I hadn’t realised when I bought this fabric, that it’s got a bit of stretch. Not that it made any difference to what I wanted to do with it- the fabric shouldn’t get any significant stretch-age in use. It did mean that where the shopkeeper ripped the fabric along the grain to cut off my bit of it, it had puckered a bit, but I don’t think it affected what I was doing.

This skirt is “self-drafted”, as I don’t exactly need a pattern to cut fabric in half lengthways, sew the sides together, put in a zip, gather the top and whack on a waistband.

It did involve a ridiculous amount of hand sewing. I hand-picked the zip, because I like the control that it gives me. I did the gathering by hand and I finished the waistband off by hand, because I haven’t mastered stitching in the ditch convincingly. And of course, I sewed on the hook and bar by hand. And then I hemmed it all by hand. I went for a deepish hem, as I wanted the skirt to be a bit short and summery, and I like the weight that a deeper hem gives (all the better for twirling!). I used invisible thread, to avoid the wrong colour showing through, and I’m happy with the results. I did find the threading of needles and tying knots were a bit of a challenge though, with my appalling eyesight!

While I was sewing, I was thinking about how I could style this skirt. I knew this grey top would go with it perfectly and I think I’ve got a couple of pink t-shirts that would tie in with the pink elements. But I can see a need for a couple of plain white tops to go with this now. Or red maybe.

I do love this skirt! It’s so pretty! And Twirly!

Twirly!

How do you get twirly skirt shots to not be blurry?

 

In other Makey news… I finished the Teal Cardigan. It’s lovely and toasty, but not really a thing of beauty. It’s a bit shapeless and not particularly flattering. It’s quite tight-fitting in the sleeves, but it’s unshaped in the torso, which doesn’t really do much for my body shape. It will be very snug and warm for the Winter. Not much use to me in May. Since it’s the first jumper I’ve knitted in at least 20 years (baby clothes don’t count) I’m treating it as a getting-back-into-it exercise. I’ll have to find a way of wearing it that doesn’t make me look like a sack of potatoes.

And this morning, I received a Parcel Of Joy! I was lucky enough to win SewMuch2Learn‘s Ultimate Blog Challenge Celebratory Giveaway. I won the pretty chambray with coloured dots. When I opened the parcel it was even prettier than her photo. It’s a beautiful cloudy bluey grey and its SO soft to the touch! I’m going to be making something with it very soon, because I don’t want it to simply shift from one person’s stash to another- it needs using and wearing and enjoying and being seen.

Beautiful chambray

Beautiful chambray

And now I have to crack on with the selfless sewing for littlest niece.

I need to work out how short this skirt is going to be

I’ve done most of the splodgy fabric skirt.

So near and yet so far...

So near and yet so far…

I’ve completed everything bar the hemming. And it could do with a good ironing! I’m going to see if I can get some invisible thread for the hemming in the week, because if I go with either grey or red it’s going to show on the bits that it’s not the right colour for.

Tonight I’m going to try and finish the cardigan. All it needs now is finishing off the buttonhole band, and sewing on the buttons. I’m performing in a dance showcase tonight, but I should be able to complete that tonight, when I get back. Although, it’s not terribly seasonal now that we’re enjoying a pleasant English Spring!

I’ve also got some Selfless Sewing to do. Littlest niece (5 years old) wants an Elsa-from-Frozen cloak- apparently they can’t be had for love or money from Disney shops, so an Auntie-made version will have to do. I’ve got some power-mesh and sequins, so I’m good to go with that. I’m not sure how to work with the mesh, but I suspect that it’s going to be a largely hand sewn project!