MMM continues – Days 15-18

I’m astonished that I’m still going strong. We’re well onto the repeats now, but I’ve somwhow managed a) to wear something me-made each day and more astonishing still b) to take & post a photo each day.

Day 15 – Colours again

Bright bright bright colours today

I was wearing the You Mean I’m Wearing Orange?! Skirt again, this time with a bright turquoise (RTW) top. I was also wearing my favourite turquoise/green shoes, that matches  the t-shirt PERFECTLY.

Day 16 – Epic Fail

I’m only showing this because I sort of have to. It’s an awful photo!

I don’t even want to be posting this… Friday’s picture is basically an Epic Fail. I couldn’t take a photo in daylight, so all I’ve got is crummy selfies in my bedroom.  The Friday photo theme was Too pretty for pants? As it turns out it was Too late for photos!

This is a repeat of the stripey circle skirt. The first wear was a rubbish outfit, now this second wear it’s a rubbish photo. I’m going to have to wear it a third time some time in MMM and make sure it’s a *nice* outfit and a *nice* photo.

Day 17 – The mahoosive London Blogger Meet-up

At the Victoria & Albert Museum

A much better outfit (well it would have to be) for the Blogger meet-up- the Jif Lemon Dress. It was nice and cool to wear on a warm Spring day, and I got a lot of complimentary comments, and people checking out the appliqués. It’s always nice to get compliments about your me-mades generally, but it’s doubly nice when it’s from people who know what they are looking at!

Day 18 – It’s Déja Vu All Over Again

I seem to be repeating last weekend! Last weekend it was Jif Lemon on the Saturday and the hi-lo hem circle skirt on the Sunday. And it’s the same again this weekend.

Please to ignore the fact that my skirt has swivelled around my waist!

Tonight I was at the Jazz Café at Reading’s football stadium, for a dance showcase. I’ve only just realised that it had got twisted around my waist by the time Trish took this photo for me! I should just call that a Styling Decision. You also can’t tell from this particular photo that I was wearing crazy high platform wedge court shoes with it, and I don’t know how I managed to not fall over and break an ankle.

Technically this was a twofer day- in addition to the skirt, I wore a pair of me-made leggings (the ones I wore on Tuesday evening) to dance in, but I don’t have photos of that. I’ll see if I can post a link to some pics later when they’re up on Facebook or elsewhere online.

 

I need to take stock a bit, see what the next week holds and what clothing I’ve got available to wear. I’m quite excited that I’ll soon have the pretty red & grey splodgy skirt to add to the list.

More MMMs

I’m typing this in my jimjams at 11am (don’t judge me- I’m catching up with the Archers) and wondering what to wear today.

Catching up on the last few days…

Day 7 – A top I made

 

A cobbled together long t-shirt

After a week of wearing skirts as my me-mades, on Wednesday I was wearing a long t-shirt I had made pre-blog. I cobbled it together by copying one of my Primark t-shirts and making it longer. I really should dig out the newspaper pattern pieces I made for it, because it’s not bad for a basic t-shirt top! Anyway, it was originally intended to be a dress, but I didn’t have enough fabric to make it as long as I would really have wanted, and I don’t feel I can get away with dresses *that* short. So it gets used more as a long tee, over jeans or leggings usually, but today it was with my plain black tube skirt from M&S. To be honest, it doesn’t get worn terribly often, so it’s good to have a reason to drag it out of the wardrobe and remember it’s available.

 

Day 8 – Another refashion

Cheers! The Blingalicious NotCardigan

This is my Blingalicious NotCardigan, which is a refashion- a plain cardigan that I beaded up. I don’t think there’s very much to say about it, other than to mention that this does get reasonable usage, but will soon be put away for the summer. It’s a fun refashion and I’ll have to do something like it again.

 

Day 9 – Dreadful photo, outfit not much better

Friday Theme – Blue – I only barely managed it!

The Friday theme had me stumped for a long time. I didn’t think I had anything me-made that was blue, apart from my blue roses dress, but it’s too dressy for my Friday job. And then I remembered! These denim-blue leggings I made for dance practice a couple of years ago, pre-blog. I made them by taking my favourite pair of leggings which had finally died a death, (after years of honourable service), opening them up and using them as the pattern. I added a bit of length and a tiny bit of flare, because I prefer a looser ankle in full-length leggings. I didn’t like it with just the t-shirt top, so I added a mini skirt (which I really need to throw out, because it’s so not in my style). I only wore this because of the Blue theme, and I won’t be repeating this outfit!

 

Day 10 – The Jif Lemon Dress gets an outing

Yesterday I actually got my act together and did some fixing-up of stuff. I sorted out the front seam of the Jif Lemon Dress, which has always been a bit too full and blousey at the bust. My bust really doesn’t need any help in that department, so now it’s a bit sleeker and smoother at the front. And seeing as I had the black thread in the sewing machine, I also mended the seams of some black leggings that had become indecent. And then I redid the waistband on my Squares & Triangles Circle Skirt, which had been bugging me for aaaages- that was a job and a half. And once I was in sewing mode, I finally started on my partner’s Nametag, ready for the NYLon Blogger Meetup next weekend. I’ve got to finish it today, to get it in the post tomorrow.

Jif Lemon Dress with the front seam sorted out

I wanted to wear the Jif Lemon Dress, because it was Eurovision night and I’d be going to watch it at my sister’s, because she does it properly, with scoresheets put together by her 1o year old daughter for us, and a sweepstake, and Euro-snacks (it’s France, time for some saucisson… Spain, Chorizo and Manchego cheese on cocktail sticks… Germany was Haribo sweets, I didn’t even know Haribo is German…)

Looking at the photo, I realise I do love that silhouette, and I should get my finger out and finish that teal version.

 

A bit of reflection so far… My pledge was to wear something me-made 5 days a week, but my personal challenge is to manage 7 days a week.  I’m ridiculously happy that I’ve got through one third of May wearing something me-made every day. I’m spectacularly pleased with myself for actually photographing each outfit. A couple of the outfits have been a bit meh, and that’s mostly because I hadn’t really thought them through. I’ve come to realise that the outfits that I like best are the ones I thought about the night before, whereas outfits that I throw together in the morning rush to get ready for work are often less successful! I must be a lot more thoughtful about my dressing for the rest of the month.

I’ve done a bit of wardrobe assessing, to see what other me-mades I’ve got available to me, and there are maybe three more in reserve for next week, but you’ll be seeing some repeats soon.

And talking of the Jif Lemon Dress…

The final mention of the Fall For Cotton challenge… The video of All The Makes is now up at Lucky Lucille’s – hooray!

I’m at 2 minutes 51. It’s the unadorned version of the dress, of course, but I still think it’s a good dress.

Presenting… The Jif Lemon Dress – Updating the Fall For Cotton Jiffy Dress

I said in the original FFC Finished post that I wanted the appeal of this dress to lie in the embellishment. I’d posted about decoration back here, and I knew after writing that post, that I wanted it to be those citrus appliqués. I didn’t want mad colours, so it was a case of sticking to one citrus fruit only, and as soon as the phrase “Jif Lemon” popped into my head, the colour scheme was set!

I made up one dummy run lemon slice, as soon as I had my felt. I didn’t have any embroidery thread in the right colour, so I just did it with white cotton and a plain running stitch, and I wasn’t taken with that effect- I worried that the edges would get fuzzy. But it gave me an idea of how the dimensions would work, and I could gauge how many I’d need to make, for my dress’s hem. Then I tried one using cotton perlé embroidery thread (Again. I like that stuff, its shiny!) and with a whip-stitch, and that felt better.

I cut out 14 of these slices. I wasn’t too worried about making them identical, but I wanted them to look broadly similar. It was boring and repetitive to sew the pieces together, but as with all such boring repetitive jobs, you just have to be able to watch tv while you’re doing it and keep the overall goal in mind.

Then it was a case of sewing the slices onto the dress- another repetitive, boring task! I’d done my calculations for how close to each other they needed to be, and how far up (they needed to clear the hem, as I didn’t want to muck up my lovely zebra print binding). I’m quite proud of how neat they are inside.

The dress is now a bit more zingy, and a lot more me. The weight of the lemon slices gives the hem a liddle bit of swing now. It’s odd, because they didn’t feel heavy before I sewed them on. I suppose it’s all a matter of distribution.

Again, I seem to have alighted on a colour that I would never normally consider wearing- the bright yellow felt that I got cheap on Ebay was waaaaaay out of my normal colour palette. For that reason, the appliqués are all on the hemline, nowhere near my face. It doesn’t look too strong because of the white. I really like how they’ve come out. I have to acknowledge to myself that this year has been a strange one for being attracted to yellows and oranges. It started back in February when I was in Cairo, and ended up getting one costume with yellow as the main colour, and one in black, red & yellow. And I kept spotting cute shoes in orange and yellow. And then there was the You Mean I’m Wearing Orange?! Skirt last month. I’m not sure if this is a long term trend for me. We’ll see…