It’s hard keeping track of what MMMs I’ve posted already

We were up to Saturday night and Eurovision, weren’t we? So the round up from there is as follows:

 

Day 11 – Sunday Chillin’

A lil bit girly!

I made this circle skirt a couple of years ago, pre-blog, and it’s another easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy knit circle skirt with an elasticated waist. This is a very thin knit, and the hem doesn’t even qualify as a hem, because it isn’t actually hemmed! Over time the hem has dropped so far from hanging in my wardrobe that I took a pair of scissors to it, on Sunday to even it up so that I , and I decided I’d leave the back un-cut and see how the skirt looks with one of those hi-lo hems. I quite like it! I’ll have to try and do it deliberately some time. Also, can I fit the word “hem” in any more into this paragraph? Hem. Yes.

Day 12 – The fixed Squares & Triangles Circle Skirt

I do love this skirt!

Today I was wearing my Squares & Triangles Circle Skirt. I love this skirt, but the waistband was too big and it had taken me a while to get my fixing head on and re-do it. I did it on the Saturday, so that I could wear it in Me Made May with honour (and with certainty that it wouldn’t fall down).

It is a full circle, and Monday was quite windy so I had a couple of Marilyn Monroe moments!

 

Day 13 – My first repeat

Another view of my office

I was wearing the Red Square Skirt, with a different type of top. I think I prefer this outfit.

But Tuesday included a bonus Me-Made. I teach bellydance on Tuesday nights, and I decided to wear a pair of me-made cropped leggings.

Bellydance Leggings!

These are a repeat of the leggings from Day 9, but shorter. The lycra is thicker and not as stretchy, so they feel completely different, but it’s still the same basic pattern.

I’m quite chuffed that I’ve made it this far without repeats, and I still have one item left* that I haven’t worn. And I’m full of optimism that I can finish my teal cardigan before May is out.

 

Day 14 – The Blue Roses Dress comes out for the sun!

Summer dress comes out for the sun

I do love the Blue Roses dress, but it’s a bit, um, dressy. I wore it to work today and it raised a few comments along the lines of “You’re looking very summery”, as though I was slightly unhinged! But today has been lovely and sunny, and just the right sort of time to wear a nice summery dress. I only wish I had more of them right now. But, man, do my legs look pasty!

 

I can’t believe we’re very nearly half way through!

 

* I’ve got a couple of really badly made skirts in the wardrobe that I am not willing to own up to in public! I may be cannibalising them for parts soon.

Me Made May – the first weekend round-up

I decided it would be unrealistic for me to post every single day in May, as well as getting a bit samey for anyone reading, so I’ll try and do the outfit posting in blocks.

Day 2 – My Minnie Mouse Skirt

Day 2 – Channelling Minnie Mouse

I made this skirt a couple of years ago, when I first started thinking about sewing my own clothes again. It was the easiest quickest make EVAH! Just a circle with a hole in it, some 3″ wide black elastic made into a waistband, and because it’s a really stable jersey I never even bothered to even hem it. Two years on and countless washes and wears later the “hem” is still absolutely fine! It’s always been the Minnie Mouse Skirt, for obvious reasons. One of these days I’ll fish out the scraps and make myself a big red and white dotty hair bow.

This is one of my rare forays into a different colour family- usually I’ll stick with pinks/purples and turquoise/teal/greens. I have a couple of reds in my wardrobe, and this is one of them. I usually integrate red in with black (my go-to neutral), as I did here, but you’ may be seeing the Minnie Mouse reappearing later this month with some of the turquoise/teal/greens.

I wore this outfit to my volunteer job (I help at a local mental health charity on Fridays) and it was making my boss giggle! The Friday Photo theme on the MMM14 Flickr pool was “Cocktail Hour”, so this is me after work, in my local, the Stoke, enjoying an end-of-the-week Rioja. The photo was kindly taken by the Gentleman Friend, who put up with me bossing him about directing him from in front of the camera (“You’ve got to make sure the skirt is showing. Yes all of it. That’s the whole point of taking these photos!”).

 

Day 3 – the Denim Skirt

Day 3 – Denim

This was one of my early blogged makes. It’s a black denim with a pale pink weft.  Do I mean weft? I mean the thread that goes across the weave of the material and in the case of denim creates the back colour on the wrong side of the fabric- white in normal blue-jeans-denim, but in this case pink. I love that the inside of this skirt is a lovely sheeny pink, and the right side is rough tough denim with a slight hint of pink. I’m thinking of upgrading this skirt. I picked up a gorgeous silky embroidery thread when I was in Penzance, and I’ve received some embroidery patterns from a giveaway, so that’s put some ideas in my head. I need to think it through.

I also realised later that it was another Twofer day- I made the hair flower clips I was wearing. Nothing terribly clever, just some silk orchids, some hair clips and a well-deployed hot glue gun.

Hair flowers – it’s really hard taking a selfie of the back of your head!

 

Day 4 – the Red Square Skirt

I’m seeing a theme emerging here- it’s been all skirts! I don’t have many me-made tops (yet), but there will be some seeing the light of day this month, I’m sure. Anyway, it was a nice enough day today to pull out the Red Square Skirt which until now has been rather too thin for the weather.

MMM Day 4 – the Red Square Skirt

Today you get a different view of the car park at my flat. My usual spot, which is a bit more discreet, was catching the sun beautifully and the photos were coming out completely washed out, so I had to change my angle. I think this is the first photo of the skirt on this blog that has shown its correct colour.

I mentioned above how I try to integrate my colours, but for now I don’t see much colour co-ordination happening with this one. It’s very starkly red & black. I think I can possibly bring in a white, maybe rock a zebra print top with it (if I had one). Another thing to put on the To Sew Sometime list.

The Red Square Skirt

My first finished make of the year.

The Red Square Skirt

I do apologise for the faded quality of the photo. It’s rilly rilly cold, and I took as many as I could stand, in the hope that one of them would be usable. I failed! The only one where the colour came out right I had a right surly expression on, and I don’t want that to be the idea you have of me! So you’ve got the one where I’m looking upwards in classic blog photo style that is a bit pale.

I’ve worn this one to work once this week already, but actually it’s not very practical for chilly Januaries, because it’s a bit too thin for a winter skirt, it’s going to come into its own in the transition to Spring. Also, it’s rather clingy with thick tights. I may have to make myself a little half-slip.

I do love those squares though- I think they’re effective and they suit my style. When I was trying to work out how to decorate this skirt, the first image I had in my head was black squares of different sizes. But then I was tempted by more complex ideas, using black and white, trying to make the squares interlock, trying to do coloured embroidery on the appliqués. I’m glad I stuck to my original idea and kept it simple, I think this skirt works all the better for it.

Technically, this was a doddle. The only thing I did that was a bit sophisticated for me was the insertion of the waistband elastic. Normally, I’d have done a simple zig-zag, with no casing of any sort, and the elastic would be all on show on the inside. This time, the elastic is more encased. I zig-zagged it in as I normally would, but then I turned the waistband over, to cover the elastic, and I zig-zagged it again, to hold the elastic in place, and keep it covered. It’s not a perfect perfect finish, but it’s a vast improvement on all my bellydance skirts, so I’m calling that a win.

In making this skirt, I am veering into a colour scheme that is quite rare for me, I don’t have many red things in my wardrobe. I do have plenty of black tops, though, so I know that I will always have something I can wear with it. But I’m now about to start on a couple of Jungle January blouses in blacks and greys, and I’m thinking they’d suit this skirt down to the ground, so I’d best get a wiggle on with them.

Teasing for a skirt

When I was visiting my Dad, he realised that I was wearing a me-made skirt, the You Mean I’m Wearing Orange?! skirt, and we talked about how I was trying to do more garment sewing, and he was suitably impressed with my appliquéing. Being of the crafty persuasion himself (where do you think I get it?) he immediately offered me the pick of his fabric stash, for appliqué purposes. His stash is a bit ancient, a throwback to when he used to do patchwork, and make doll’s beds, and collages and so on. He would cadge fabric samples and remnants from wherever he could, and he had a big banana box full of fabric to show me*. It was mostly plain polycottons, and very tiny prints, and very small pieces. There were some bits of vintage Laura Ashley, and a lot of French cotton piqués. I couldn’t see any patterned pieces that I knew I could use immediately but there was one big bit of red cotton jersey that I could immediately see as becoming a skirt. I took that and a narrow bit of cerise cotton, because I thought I could realistically use these sooner rather than later.

I didn’t intend to get all precious about this skirt, and get anything as organised as a pattern. I took my new M&S pull-on stretchy skirt, which fits me fine, and I used that as my pattern. Side seams (I’m not even neatening the edges, they won’t fray), and an elastic waistband. I had 1″ elastic in my stash. Bish bash bosh.

The Waistband. It’s much redder than this in reality

But of course, I can’t leave a plain skirt alone, can I? I dug out my scraps bag, and found an old t-shirt sleeve that roughly matched the red jersey in terms of weight and knit-ness. I cut three squares in different sizes, eyeballing it, I wasn’t going to use anything as sophisticated as a ruler, either for measuring or for straight sides. I pinned them on and pinned the hem up and tried it on to check for positioning. I was happy so I machined the squares on.

Squares. Blimey, it’s coming out even more orangey in this photo. Honestly, it is red, I promise.

Now I’ve got a load of tacking to take out, and some hemming to do. It might get done tonight. It might have to wait until tomorrow. And who knows when I’ll be able to get this photographed in reasonable light?

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* I know, every sewist reading this is laughing up their sleeve. “Heehee, one big boxful, call that a stash?!”.