Me Made May 2017 week 1 summary

I've finally finished my clothes cull and have donated several bags of clothes and shoes to charity so now I  have a bit of storage capacity for new makes.  That being said, I haven't actually finished anything yet this month, but I do have tomorrow off work, so there maybe something finished soon!

I spent some time last weekend sorting out and photographing outfits which led to the realisation that I need to knit up the cardigan quantities of green yarn which I have stashed, and I could also do with a pink t-shirt!  Photographing things in advance saves the hassle of doing daily photos, which I find makes for an easier life.

So, without further ado, here is my round up of the first week for this year's Me Made May challenge.

Monday was a bank holiday and therefore was freezing cold!  I wore my Monochrome Breton jumper with some black leggings (although the photo shows a skirt - I can't put trousers on Myrtle unfortunately).

On Tuesday I wore a dress which I made during MMM 2016, and an rtw cardigan.  I have these in several colours and they will probably feature a few times this month.  They're very useful with summer dresses and are from Woolovers, although they don't seem to have them on their website now.

Simplicity 2444

Wednesday's outfit was another dress which I made for MMM2016 and an rtw cardigan.

Christine Haynes Emery

On Thursday I wore a lime green By Hand London Elisalex dress and rtw cropped cardigan from Fever - again, not on their website now.

By Hand London Elisalex

On Friday I wore my green birds dress with an rtw cardigan

McCalls 5764 - vintage from 1961

Saturday's choice was my tape measures dress and rtw cardigan from H&M.  A woman came up to me in the petrol station as I was going to pay and told me she loved my dress - it's lovely to get a compliment like that, I was smiling all the way home!

Vogue 8789

And today I'm wearing my red roses dress and an rtw cardigan by Banned.

Butterick 5748

I hope to spend a large part of tomorrow sewing because I haven't taken the cover off my machine yet this month!  Actually this year...  There has been progress on the knitting front though, so that's good.

Me made May week 3 round-up

And here we have the outfits I wore during the third week of May - lucky there has been a long bank holiday weekend for me to do some blog catching up!

15 May - Shell Pink cardigan and rtw jeans and blouse.  As is obvious not a very good mirror selfie!  But this was the least worst of the dozen or so photos that I took...

Day 15 - Shell pink cardigan and rtw jeans and blouse

16 May - Honeybee cardigan which I made during Spring 2013, and Vogue 8789 orange dress.

Day 16 - V-8789 orange dress and Honeybee cardigan

17 May - rtw dress and Purple Hearts cardigan - blogged about here although I haven't yet published the post which I wrote once it was finished...

Day 17 - Eucalyptus dress and Purple Hearts cardigan

18 May - Pink birds dress and Bette cardigan - I've only recently finished this, so, yet another FO which I haven't blogged about yet!  Wrote about the dress here.

Day 18 - Bette cardigan and Pink Birds dress

19 May - This is a cotton cardigan which I made back in 2010 and which I haven't worn that much in the past couple of years because I prefer waist-length cardigans with dresses with full skirts.  However, I love the colour and should wear it more.  The t-shirt and skirt I've had for quite a few years.  The skirt originally had a tie sash on it, but I unpicked the side seams and took it out because I think it looks better without.  Love the vintage-y look of it.

Day 19 - Yellow cotton cardigan, skirt from Next

20 May - Shell Pink cardigan (again) and green daisy Emery dress.  I love this dress, it's so summery (shame the weather hasn't caught up with itself yet though).

Shell Pink cardigan and green daisy Emery dress

21 May - This is a tie front cardigan which I made a few years ago, and the dress is a modified Elisalex which I blogged about here.

Tangerine Dream cardigan and Birdielex dress

And now I'm all caught up with me-made-May.  Phew!  Just the posts about this year's finished cardigans to finish writing and publish now...

Me made May week 1 round-up

Well, I need to catch up here, it's already day 23 of me-made May!  So, without further delay, rewind to the beginning of the month.

1 May - Roses are Red dress and Sam Stewart cardigan.  I blogged about the dress here, but the cardigan I only finished last month and it will get its own post later.  This was the first time I'd worn this dress this year - it's not really one I would wear in the winter so I'm very glad that Spring is here because I love it!

Day 1 - Roses are Red dress and Sam Stewart cardigan

 2 May - Pink tape measures dress and Shell Pink cardigan.  I wrote about the dress here, and the cardigan here and here.  This cardigan is lovely and warm, although it has pilled a bit...

Day 2 - Pink tape measures dress and Shell Pink cardigan

3 May - Noro cardigan and jeans - which won't fit on Myrtle so they didn't get photographed.  It was flippin' cold and this cardigan is nice and warm!  I haven't blogged about it because I made it back in 2012, before I started writing this blog.  It's just a basic stocking stitch cardigan really - not much more to say about it than that!

Cardigan made with Noro Silk Garden yarn

4 May - Dotty Anna dress and Pecan Primrose cardigan.  Dress blogged here, and cardigan here.  I really like both of these - separately and together!

Day 4 - Dotty Anna dress and Pecan Primrose cardigan

5 May - Garden Birds dress and Blue Palm Leaf cardigan.  Dress blogged here, and cardigan blogged here.  It says something about the weather we had at the beginning of the month that I was wearing wool cardigans rather than lighter weight rtw ones.

Day 5 - Garden Birds dress and Blue Palm Leaf cardigan

6 May - Paper Roses Cambie dress and Sam Stewart cardigan.  Again.  Dress blogged here.  I am so pleased with this cardigan - it goes with quite a lot of my dresses!

Day 6 - Paper Roses Cambie and Sam Stewart cardigan

7 May - Pink Polka Dot Butterick 5748 and an rtw cardigan - the weather must have been warmer!  Dress is blogged here.

Pink Polka Dot Butterick 5748 and rtw cardigan

And there we have it - a week's worth of outfits; only two more catch-up me-made May posts to go!

Me Made May - week 3 round up

A bit behind schedule on posting here, life, in the form of redecorating, has intervened.  There has been topsy-turvyness in these parts for the last couple of weeks, but things are pretty much back to normal now and all the boxing up, packing up and moving around of STUFF was so worth the end result.

It has meant no sewing though, and not much knitting either, but I have been able to do a bit here and there.  Now to catch up on Me Made May.  Week 3 is the only week this month that I actually went to work every day - June will be a bit of a shock to the system, since I only did one full week in April as well, a girl could very easily get used to part-time hours...

So, Monday's outfit was my Up, Up and Away dress with a fuchsia pink cardigan from H&M, dark brown tights and chocolate brown El Naturalista shoes.

12th May outfit

On Tuesday I wore my Dotty Anna with a navy cardigan from Woolovers, navy tights and Orla Kiely by Clarks shoes - I love these shoes ;-) I hope she does another collection.

13th May outfit

Wednesday was a very. good. day. because the sun was out so I could ditch the tights YAY!  I had thought about having a week of wearing bird print dresses every day, but decided that was probably a bit too much of a good thing, so the first one of the week made its appearance today - my Bluebird dress, worn with a bright blue Woolovers cardi and navy Birkenstocks - the season of painted toenails is here at last!

14th May outfit

On Thursday I wore my Measuring Up dress - the ideal dress for Me Made May don't you think ;-) - with a pink Woolovers cardigan and pink Birks.

15th May outfit

For the last day of the working week it was back to birds again.  My Cath Kidston Garden Birds furnishing fabric mash-up dress (Elisalex and NL 6824), with a blue cardi from H&M and navy Birks.  I think I may have to bias-bind the skirt seams of this dress, because having washed it a couple of times they have frayed a bit.  I usually pink seams to finish them, but these I zigzagged because I thought if I pinked them and they frayed there wouldn't be much seam allowance left to do something different.  The bodice should be fine because the seams are all encased.  Something to bear in mind on future furnishing fabric garments.

16th May outfit

Well, that's a week's worth of outfits caught up.  Last week's and next week's combos I will put in one post at the end of next week - I only worked three days last week and next week will be four days with the bank holiday tomorrow, so they can all go in one post.

The decorating work meant that I had to miss the NYLON2014 bloggers' meet up last Saturday which I had been really looking forward to.  I did think I might be able to make the afternoon shopping part of the day, but as it turned out, it was not to be.  So I shall be living vicariously through the posts of the bloggers who did go and hope that I'll be able to go to another meet up in London at some point.  And I don't really need to buy any more fabric at the moment... although my sister has bought some fab fabrics from Goldhawk Road recently which have set me thinking that one or two more purchases wouldn't hurt...  I wonder whether the fact that the Tories have been kicked out of Ham & Fulham council in the elections last week might mean a reprieve for the Goldhawk Road shops.  I really hope so.

Well, that's it for this post, I have a sleeve to finish knitting (oh what joy).

Measuring up

Well, having blogged last month that I would probably make up this pattern in this fabric, I decided not to wait for spring and cut it out earlier this month. It’s a very quick make and I can see me getting a lot of wear out of this when the weather warms up. I love this fabric, which I bought on the Goldhawk Road back in the summer, it makes me smile whenever I look at it and I have some more in one of the other colourways – I haven’t decided what to use that for yet though.

I cut this as a straight size 12 and followed the pattern exactly except, as before, I just cut two widths of fabric for the skirt. Even with this narrower width fabric (45”) it’s plenty full enough and I got the whole thing from less than 2.5 metres which is a lot less than the envelope suggests is needed. I added fusible interfacing to the fold-back facings because I thought that the print might show through, which would bug me, it’s done the trick!

Looking at the photo of this I think I should probably adjust Myrtle (my dressform) in some way, because although she has the same vital stats as me she definitely looks thinner!

Pink tape measures

Now I have an Anna maxi dress to hem.  Toodle pip.

Oranges and lemons

Yes, there are an orange dress and a lemon yellow dress coming up.  The orange one is Vogue 8789, I can’t remember when I bought this, but it was one of my first pattern purchases.  I like the neckline and kimono sleeves and the fact that the bodice is cut on the cross – I think I’ll probably make one of these out of tape measure fabric at some point.  I altered it to put the zip in the back but I won’t do that next time I make this (and there will be a next time – it was a quick make); I’ll also make the bodice a bit shorter and maybe take the bust darts in even more than I did on this version.  I also didn’t use the skirt pattern pieces; I think there would have been too much bulk around the waist if I had.  So the skirt is just two widths of the fabric (about 60” wide) and that is plenty full enough as it is quite thick cotton.

V-8789

And now to the lemon.  This is the first dress I made back in June of this year when I returned to sewing.  I had seen lots of lovely Cambies by Sewaholic on the interwebz, decided I wanted one and that I had to start somewhere so that’s how this became the first dress I’d sewn for hmm… let’s say 20+ years.  The yellow seersucker fabric which I used I’d had for so long that I can’t remember when or where I bought it, and it was 36” wide which I seem to recall used to be a standard width for fabrics in my dim and distant youth, but not any more.  Because of this I didn’t follow the recommended cutting layout and used pretty much all of the 3m that I had.  I put a centred zip in this, and after it was finished decided it was time to buy an invisible zipper foot and all the dresses I’ve made since have had concealed zips.

This is such a pretty pattern, I really like it a lot a lot a lot and will definitely make more.  Although not in the depths of winter.  But come next spring – oh yes, I have lots of fabric permutations in my head already.

Yellow A-line Cambie