Me-Made-May review so far

Here is my first round up for Me-Made-May. This year I am planning to wear me-made items for 5 days out of 7 and to weed out stuff from my wardrobe that I no longer wear. I have worn me-made everyday so far apart from Tuesday as that is the day I go to the gym and I have not made any sports wear!

Day 1
Self drafted dress

Day 2
no photo, but I wore this 'Knock off' top:

Day 3
Same top as yesterday

Day 4
Blue MyImage cowl neck top

Day 5
Colette Jasmine top

Feeling as blurry as the photo at breakfast!

Day 6
I wore an blogged top and as yet have no photos of it or me wearing it!

I also did really well on going through stuff in the first couple of days of May.  I have had a pile of clothes that Youngest has grown out of sitting outside her bedroom door.  The pile has also included various items of mine, and countless outgrown shoes from all family members.  I have been planning to go through the pile and work out what to keep for the fabric, what to offer to my friends daughter, and what to donate to charity. Locally we had a call out for donations to Nepal, specifically asking for warm clothes for adults and children, coats, duvets and towels amongst other things. Our Primary school managed to collect 3 7-seater cars full (with all the seats down) in 2 days and the people at the collections point were so grateful. It was heart warming to see people give so generously and it certainly made me be less sentimental about some of the clothes I gave, because I knew they were going to directly to people who needed them more that me.

As I suspected, my first week of MMMay15 has been mostly tops, and it is still too cold to wear most of them without another layer on top! I am greatly enjoying seeing what other people are wearing in the Flickr group too.

Me-Made-May 15

Just to say that I am signing up to Me-Made-May'15 this year. Here is my pledge, and I think this is the first time I have actually managed to sign up before the 1st of May!:

 'I, TamsinWP of Pimpmycurtains.blogspot.co.uk, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '15. I will endeavour to wear a me-made or repurposed item for at least 5 days each week for the duration of May 2015. I am also looking to go through my current wardrobe and weed out stuff I no longer wear'

I really want to weed out my wardrobe. I do it sporadically, but often end up not getting rid of the things that I weeded out because I like the fabric/it might be suitable for one of my girls/it's the only thing I have that goes with something I want to keep. This means I have a lot ot stuff around the house including a pile of things to sort through that is almost as tall at me! With 5 of us in the house and the girls growing constantly, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of stuff we all generate!

I am planning to sign up to the Pinterest group and the Flickr group, but I will probably only post here each week with a summary post.

Good luck everyone!

Work in progress - dress for Eldest

I am currently working on a dress for Eldest but am unable to continue until she gets home from school. We chose a contrasting trim for the sleeves, but I'm not sure how she will want it - in-your-face obvious (on left) or discrete (on right), bearing in mind we also an orange zip which will be exposed. We shall see....

A technicolour dreamcoat

image from wikipedia

Youngest's primary school have just put on a show of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Over the years word has got out that I sew, and I was anticipating being asked to make something - they did Bugsy Malone a couple of years ago but I was making my sisters wedding dress at the time so couldn't help.

I was asked a couple of weeks ago if I could come up with something and I already had a plan.  My Mother in law had made my girls some dressing up cloak things when they were little and we still have one. I didn't take any before pictures, but it is a rich purple velour fabric with a wadding type backing and quilted.  The teacher had bought 2 metres of a multicoloured zigzag patterned fabric which I thought would look good cut into strips and then sewn onto the cloak.

I tore off a strip from the fabric to see how it would look, then washed the rest of the fabric.  This is a lesson to anyone who doesn't wash their fabric before making it up .... 5 and a bit centimetres, people! Imagine if that was a garment that had just been made!

5+ centimetres of shrinkage!

I cut the fabric into strips of roughly 5-6cm wide with pinking shears, then pinned them to the coat with gaps in between of about a centimetre. I then sewed down the centre of each strip and stopped sewing about 2 thirds of the way down the body. I was hoping that doing this would allow a small amount of fluttering as the coat was put on and worn.

cutting the strips

Pinning the strips

Here is the finished article on my dress form. 

I haven't any photos from the performance - licensing conditions prevent any photos from being taken during a show (even in a Primary school), and the whole cast were so hot at the end that I didn't feel I could get a photo of Joseph afterwards! I may get a shot of Youngest modelling it later but she is considerably taller at 9yrs old, than the girl who played Joseph, who is nearly 11!

FO: Christmas Shirt for Husband - number 4

More unselfish sewing... I made Husband another shirt for Christmas 2014 using the same pattern as I have used before (McCalls 6044). 

He had asked for a shirt that was plain or at least a bit more 'everyday' than some of his others. He feels that a couple are a bit flamboyant and therefore need an occasion to be worn.  Well, I have a couple of plain fabrics would be suitable but when I was at Goldhawk Road last November (for the Lauren Lladybird meet-up) I found a lovely striped fabric that I thought would go with a couple of Husband's sweaters, in a teal/turquoise colour. I think is it 100% cotton and is lovely and soft. There were a couple of other colours too, but this one just 'spoke' to me.

I used the same pattern, in the smaller size and even remembered to use Carolyn's tutorial for flat felling the sleeve seam this time.

I tried to do it last time but trimmed the wrong bit of the seam allowance so they ended up being faux felled seams! My only quibble with this one is that the buttonholes are not as good as I would have liked, but we sewists like to point out the bad points don't we?!

Husband has worn this a lot but I have only just managed to get any pictures:

happy Husband!

Catalogue man?

FO: Figgy's Sunki Dress - double take

Some time ago Youngest asked me to make her something and after a bit of research I decided on the Sunki Dress by Figgy's.

When I had first looked at it ( about a year ago) it was only available up to the age/size 8/9. When I was clicking around the internets in the run up to Christmas I found that tween /teen sizes had been added and the sizing now goes up to age 16(XL). I decided to purchase this larger sizing, just in case one of my older girls fancied it. I took Youngest measurements and she fell in the 'small' size.  At the same time the eldest daughter of my friend was coming up to her 10th birthday. Having made a couple of things for her younger sister I thought I would make her something too. Her measurements were roughly the same as my Youngest so I decided to make them both the same dress in same size.

Youngest had requested denim with a contrast panel - she chose a turquoise and white polka dot cotton that I bought ages ago just because I liked it.

I thought navy corduroy with a contrast would be nice for my friends daughter - I used scraps left over from my Polly top for the contrast panel.

I made them in tandem - sewing each step on both dresses before moving on. I didn't need to change out the threads on my machines as the main colour for both is navy which made life a bit easier. The style is a straight tunic with shaped panels at the side which also form pockets.

The shoulder seam has a pretty overlap detail and the sleeves have pleating at the sleeve head.

The style is similar to the Lisette Portfolio dress that I made a few years ago, including the style of pocket. Sewing the pocket was the trickiest bit even though I had done similar on the Portfolio dress and I was following the online tutorial provided on the Figgy's website. I think it worked out OK, there isn't too much puckering at the pocket seams. The corduroy was much easier to manipulate than the denim.

The zips when in without a hitch:

Both girls were delighted with their dresses.

picture taken at another friends birthday party

Considering that their measurements were within a centimetre of each other and I made the same size, they fit quite differently. I think because the corduroy has a softer hand, it drapes better and appears to be a fraction longer. The denim is quite stiff, although it is a stretch denim, and doesn't move with the body so well, which makes it ride up and appear shorter. Having worn hers several times, Youngest has asked me to put on cuffs made from the contrasting fabric as she struggles to get a cardi on over it at the moment - she needs something to hold onto on the sleeve as she pulls the cardi on. I thought I had made full length sleeves, but looking at the pictures I may not have done.  If I were to make this again (which I probably will in the summer) I would have a go at making the pockets bigger - they look like they are going to be nice and deep but are actually very shallow and not much use as pockets. These were also my first finished makes of the year.

Overall I hade two very happy girls!

FO: Skirts for Eldest

Happy New Year to everyone. I am probably not going to do a review of last year as the latter half was not much fun. I have lots of catching up still to do with blogging my makes, so here are a couple of skirts for Eldest.

Skirt one was started (as in she cut it out) by Eldest two summers ago, I think, in a heavy denim from my Mother-in-law. It was finished by me towards the end of the summer 2014. We used Burda 9562 view A, which does not seem to be available anymore.

top stitching and pleats

It was very short so I added at least 5 cm to the length before we cut it out and it is still a bit short! We used age 15 to ensure it would fit her as she is quite curvy, however her shape is still changing plus she prefers to wear things on her waist rather than below, so I ended up putting elastic in the back of the yoke at the waist.

This pattern is designed to sit just below the natural waist, but with Eldest prefering to wear it on her waist, it makes it shorter than planned when worn!


Skirt two was inspired by this skirt in the window of J Crew:

 and this skirt in Johnnie B, the Boden teen section:

Photo from Boden.co.uk

I could see that it was a pretty simple design and that I could 'knock something up' pretty quickly.  I bought some chambray from a local shop. I think it was 4.95 or maybe £7 (I can't quite remember) a metre and nice quality. I loosely used this chart for sizing and this tutorial for making skirt - which I think has probably made the skirt too poofy for Eldest. I thought for a future skirt it may be better to have a plain front to the skirt with any gathering just in the back.  I intially hemmed the skirt to be 22" at the back and 21" in the front (her curvy bottom lifts skirts slightly and makes the hem uneven). This was not a flattering length, so I shortened  it by 2" all round.

I also put a welt pocket on the front.  It is not brilliant but it looks ok and fits her phone. I only did one as I made it up as I went long really, and didn't fancy trying to do a second one and getting the placement wonky!

She seems pretty happy with them both and has worn them, but I only have pictures of her curled up in a chair in the 2nd skirt and you can't actually see much of the skirt!

I have just realised that this ties in with my previous post of using RTW for inspiration!