A long Me Made Weekend

Day 27 already and I can’t believe I’ve got all this way through Me Made May and have managed to wear something I’ve made or refashioned every single day. I’d been slightly dubious about it, hence I’d hedged my bets with a 5-days-a-week pledge, but I’ve surprised myself. A full Reflections and Lessons Learned post will be forthcoming once May is properly finished.

Onto the photos… As previously noted, we’re well onto repeats now, unless I surprise myself and manage to make something new in the next two evenings.

Day 23 – Friday

A bit grungy!

Friday I was at my volunteer job, and it’s generally very casual. I was wearing my pre-blog long tunic-y t-shirt dress. Styled with yoga pants and a hoodie. I thought it was all a bit grungy and down at heel, but my volunteer boss said I was glamorous because I was wearing animal print!

I was *this* close to saying “hang the photographing, I’m tired” on Friday evening.

Day 24 – Saturday

A new make! The Slouchy Teal Cardigan

Aha! A new item! The previously mentioned Me Made Cardigan. I should have known better than to say it was too warm for using in May. That was just tempting Providence, wasn’t it? It turned cold over the weekend, so although I didn’t think I’d be wearing it much for a few months yet, I pulled it out of the cupboard. It’s a bit formless and unflattering, but it’s toasty and it’s the first jumper I’ve knitted for myself in a good 20 years, so I’m cutting myself some slack, and calling it “slouchy” rather than shapeless.

The leggings are also me-made, repeated from Day 9.

Day 25 – Features one of my lovely nieces

Saying goodbye to my eldest niece. Inadvertent colour co-ordination.

My eldest niece*, Sophie, is off to the far end of the planet in the next couple of weeks, she’s flying to New Zealand for a year or two. Or maybe more. I can’t help fearing that some hunky rugby player will steal her heart and keep her there. Her leaving party was on Sunday. Although I didn’t realise it when deciding what to wear, I wore the perfect dress (repeated from Day 14), as the colour scheme for the party was lime green and blue (hence the pompoms).

Most of the guests were the nieces’ friends, it made me feel very old as they were all in their teens and early twenties! But they’re all such nice kids. Eldest niece already knew about MMM as she’d taken the Eurovision evening photo, and, bless her, she was telling her friends all about it.

Day 26 

Selfie Fail

Monday (being traditional British Bank Holiday Weather) ended up being a stay in and hunker down day. I wore jimjams for much of it! But I acknowledged that my pyjamas are not me-made. Lesson learned. Next MMM, I’m going to need a cosy onesie or something like, so that if I need to take a duvet day, I can do so within the terms of the challenge.

So I got dressed for the afternoon. Another repeat for the easy-peasy floral hi-lo circle skirt. This is turning into my go-to comfy weekend wear.

I totally failed to photograph myself in it.

Day 27 – Back to work

Total outfit repeat!

This is a complete repeat from Day 12. In the same outfit too, only the shoes are different. I feel like I’m letting the side down! I love this skirt but today has been a trifle windy, and the walk to my office is a passageway up a hill which acts like a wind tunnel, and I’ve had a fair few Marilyn Monroe moments- eeek!

I just spotted I have “orbs” in this photo. Indeed I have orbs on my orbs. How ghostly! Some say these offices are haunted- it’s an old school, and there’s rumours of a ghost of an especially fierce headmaster, but this particular office is apparently the old lavatory block, and I’ve never heard of a haunted lav!

 

Only four more days to go! Thursday, Friday and Saturday are going to need some planning, because I’m off to France for the weekend.

 

* I am very blessed in the Niece department. I’ve got eight of them, and two nephews. Eldest niece is 22, and Youngest Niece is 5.

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.

*buffs nails on lapel*

I wore my squares and triangles circle skirt to work for a meeting, and it got a couple of lovely compliments from my colleagues.

I really must do this more often- compliments are nice!

The Squares and Triangles Circle Skirt

I got this skirt finished last night, in time to wear it today for my niece’s First Holy Communion celebrations.

The Squares and Triangles Circle Skirt

Photobombed by one of the many nieces

I have many nieces* (well, eight- that’s really rather a lot from three sisters). Apart from the photobomber, the little girl in blue behind me is another one of ours. She’s a 3 year old girl with a very definite sense of style- she was wearing two necklaces, and at least six bracelets, despite her mother’s suggestion that she really didn’t need to wear *quite* that many. Oh no, she’s firmly in the More is More Camp.

My favourite thing about this?

Apart from the perfectly reasonable pride in making something wearable- I love this fabric. It’s fairly thick cotton, with a slight element of stretch, and it’s got a hefty weight to it. It falls beautifully, even though I’m not wearing a petticoat with it. One of these days I might make myself a frilly petticoat to see how much fouffe I can get into this, but it doesn’t actually need it.

It also performed brilliantly in the comfort test- one huge roast dinner later, I am still happy to be wearing this.

* Nephews, not so many…

Work in Progress- a skirt

It was high time I did some more sewing, so last night I measured myself up, and did all the algebraic calculations, involving pi, for making a circle skirt. I wanted it to be knee length, and I was going to use the black and white and red and chartreuse geometric print, which I’d got in my stash. It’s good & wide, I just wasn’t sure if it was 140cm wide, or 150cm wide. If the former, I’d need to do it in two half circles, if the latter, I could manage it in one single circle.

So tonight I took out the fabric to see whether it would work, and as it turns out, once I’d allowed for the print edge finishing, it was about 146cm wide. I could just about wheedle a full circle out of what I’d got, assuming that the white bit at the print edge would be in the hem turn-up, which, although not perfect, is an acceptable imperfection, in my book.

Horror then struck, when I started to inspect the fabric in detail, to see how I was going to cut it. It was an end of roll, and I’d wangled getting the last ½ metre included for the price of the 2 metres I’d actually requested. Turns out it was just as well I got that last freebie extra, because there’s about 1½ metres of flaws down one edge, where the fabric must have got caught up in some sort of cutting mechanism, and there is a series of small slashes which means that edge of the fabric is unusable. Major boo.

Flaws in my fabric- oh noez!

Still, best foot forward. “Can I still make this work?” I asked myself, and I just about could, again using the “it’ll be part of the hem allowance” justification- there would be two small slashes in the piece I cut, but I could mend them, and they’d be part of the hem turn-up.

So I cut the circle out, and sewed a zip in, tried it on before I did the waistband, and it’s blooming huge! I seem to have lost 3cm of waist measurement overnight! Oh well, again I’m making the best of it I can… I’ve eased the skirt top edge in a bit, and I think it’s going to be right.

I’ve got all the machine work done, and the waistband is all pinned and ready to be hand sewn. (I’m leaving all the hand sewing to do over the next few evenings.) The skirt is hanging now, in case the bias drops. I’m not expecting it to drop massively, as this is a fairly dense cotton, with a small bit of stretch in it, and also it’s not a long skirt, so there’s not too much weight to it. When I made circle skirts for dancing, they’d stretch like whoa, but they were usually in much more loosely woven fabrics and more voluminous. So I’m expecting this to behave in a more civilised way!

Hanging!