Tag: Me Made May 2014

Me-Made May, Days 2-6

2/5/14

May 2nd – Grumpy-looking and in the rain. Applied a weird filter to the photo because it has a peculiar streak right across it.

I hate this cardigan. It’s gone all floppy, it’s difficult to wash and dry, and it isn’t warm. I keep it because it goes with everything I own, and I have a cardigan shortage. If I hadn’t been focussing on things I’ve made myself, I’d have worn a plain dark grey cardigan that my Mum knitted for me about twenty years ago.

Dress: Self drafted, loose fitting linen dress with square yoke and deep ruffle at the hem
Petticoat: Self drafted, elastic waist with ruffle at the hem and eyelet lace trim
Cardigan: Eve, in Colinette Giotto (ravel.me/eternalmagpie/e2)
Shoes: Fairysteps

3/5/14

May 3rd – a bit over-excited in a shoe shop!

I just about never wear this jacket, because polar fleece (which it’s lined with) makes me go a bit hot and bothered. This was the first time I’d worn it with the matching psychedelic print belt (identical to the shoes!), and I quite liked it. The bow stayed put, and the belt didn’t slip around even without belt loops to hold it in place. (Yes, I bought the shoes. Obviously.)

Yellow Submarine jacket, Butterick 5254, blogged here:
eternalmagpie.com/blog/2009/10/09/yellow-submarine-jacket/
I may have got a little over excited when I found a pair of matching Vans this morning! 😀

4/5/14

May 4th – a bad selfie that doesn’t even really show the t-shirt. Never mind.

This was a real stretch to wear something me-made. I tend to wallow about in jeans and t-shirts when I’m not at work, and those are all bought from shops. If I hadn’t had this top lurking in the back of the wardrobe, Sunday would have been a me-made fail.

Refashioned t-shirt – removed the sleeves and neck binding, turned a small hem to the outside. Shaped the side seams to make a flared tunic.
(Also: ancient jeans, new Beatles Vans.) 

5/5/14

May 5th – why do I always look weird in photos?!

I hate this cardigan as well. I love the shape of it, but it’s hard to wash and dry, and because it’s chunky yarn its own weight stretches it at the shoulders. It went bobbly almost immediately, and it sheds more hair than the damn rabbit. I heartily do NOT recommend Rowan Polar. (Thankfully I think it’s discontinued now.) I need to re-knit this in a different yarn. Or at a lighter gauge. Or both. The bloomers I love, and I’m especially pleased that they couldn’t have matched the dress better if I’d bought them together!

Dress & slip: Phase Eight (drastically reduced in Debenhams because one strap had come adrift from the slip – nothing a few stitches couldn’t fix.)
Cardigan: Cate in Rowan Polar (ravel.me/eternalmagpie/c1)
Bloomers: adapted from a pyjama pattern (eternalmagpie.com/blog/2013/07/11/blooming-lovely/)
Sandals: Think!

6/5/14

May 6th – I really need to clean my mirror!

I like black and grey stripes. Can you tell? I also like loose, floppy, soft, comfy clothes. Particularly when I’m not feeling well, which is quite often. Every time I wear this cardigan I think “I must chop off the giant ridiculous hood so it’s less bunchy at the shoulders”, and every time it goes in the wash and comes out again and I’m so keen to wear it that I don’t have time to take the scissors to it. I really must get around to that. (I made the stripy part of the sleeves wrong too, so I can’t push them up – the stretch goes lengthways instead of sideways. Oops.) I need to make more cardigans like this. I need to make more leggings too, as these keep falling down. I’m a bit larger than I was when I made them, and they’re a really good heavy jersey with lots of lycra, but they just won’t stay up!

Top: (underneath) New Look – the shop not the pattern company! 😉
Dress: Vintage Vogue 2787 in viscose jersey (eternalmagpie.com/blog/2010/08/19/vogue-2787/)
Leggings: self-drafted
Cardigan: self-drafted
Shoes: Conker (conkershoes.com)

 

General observations…

I don’t know why I thought cutting in a fringe would be a good idea, my hair seems determined not to stay put. Maybe I’ll just grow it out again.

Now I’ve found a handy place to balance the mirror, hopefully the photos will improve.

I should probably smile more. Except that I’m not a very smily person, so smiling at the camera just feels really fake and weird. (And all you can see is TEETH.) But then the one photo of me actually genuinely smiling is definitely my favourite. So I should probably smile more, whether I like it or not.

I’m enjoying looking at other people’s photos and noticing the variations between people who obviously sew things that they want to wear (like leggings, jeans, t-shirts) and those who sew because they want something fancy (like novelty print dresses, jackets, some vintage patterns). I need to find a better balance in this myself – or find a way to wear the fancy stuff more often.

Thanks to a suggestion from Mim at Crinoline Robot, I am now keeping track of Me-Made May via a spreadsheet! As well as noting what I actually wore, I’m also colour coding each item depending on whether it’s handmade by me, handmade by someone else (e.g. my Conker and Fairysteps shoes), was bought or given to me second-hand, or was bought new but is made from organic cotton or in an otherwise ethical manner. So far my biggest “bought in a shop and not even slightly ethically produced” culprits are underwear, jeans and t-shirts. (I do own some organic and Fair Trade tees, but most of mine pre-date me starting to care about that. Which I suppose is ethical in a different way – wearing your clothes to death instead of just chucking them out on a whim.)

I’ve also cast on a new cardigan, as I clearly have a lack of cardigans that I actually like! The one that keeps coming up over and over again in other people’s photos is Miette, so I’m now knitting a pink sparkly short-sleeved one. I don’t think I’ll get it finished before the end of May, but I think it’ll overtake the stripy tank top that I’m sick of wrestling.

So, erm, could try harder? Is that the general consensus? Also, I think it’s a bit weird that I put so much time and effort into choosing patterns and buying fabrics and making clothes… and then I really don’t care at all about what I actually wear every day. Making decisions at 7am is hard.

Me-Made May: A Scruffy Start!

1/5/14

Oh dear. The Me-Made May Flickr group is filling up with all sorts of lovely smart people showing off their finest hand made clothing for the occasion. And then I go and post this.

Typically, yesterday I was wearing an almost entirely me-made outfit. Today, not so much.

  • Trousers: Black cords with buttons on the pockets, John Rocha for Debenhams
  • T-shirt: An ancient black long-sleeved Hanes men’s skinny fit, from back in the days when we used to print t-shirts. (Though this one’s always been plain.)
  • Jumper: Me-Made black fleece cowl-neck tank top.
  • Bracelet: Honey & Ollie, with added dangly bits
  • Glasses: Gok Wan for Specsavers. (I need an eye test soon, which almost certainly means I need new glasses. I’m avoiding that possibility because I love this pair so much and they’ve been discontinued.)

I took the photo at work, in the very untidy cloakroom, because I don’t currently have an accessible full-length mirror at home. I suppose I should remedy that, if I’m supposed to be taking pictures of myself for the rest of the month!

1/5/14

I did have one other bit of hidden me-made goodness though, which was my favourite socks. I love wearing handmade socks, there’s just something so warm and comforting and lovely about them. And yet I only own two pairs, because I keep knitting things for other people at the expense of my own feet! I think I need to be a bit ruthless, and just treat myself to a few new pairs of socks. It’s not as though I have any shortage of sock yarn (a new skein arrived today!), just a shortage of time. (I’m a slow knitter, so socks take ages.)

Comments from the Flickr group have so far been polite, with the key observation being that I look “comfortable”. Which I am, because that’s the entire point of the clothes that I make for myself! Living with fibromyalgia being the literal pain that it is, comfort is of paramount importance. If I want to have enough space in my brain to be able to get on with my life, I need to reduce my external sources of pain as far as possible. Which means comfortable clothes, at all times.

I do think I need to up my game from today’s outfit though. Otherwise “comfortable” could all too easily be synonymous with “frumpy”, “boring”, “shapeless” and “scruffy”. I may well be all of those things in myself, but I don’t necessarily want that to be reflected in my clothes!

Me-Made May 2014

1956 Shirtwaist

This dress (a 1956 Advance pattern) is almost complete, it just needs buttons and buttonholes. (And a placket and a couple of snap fasteners.) I’m making it for a purpose – there’s a 1950s night coming up at work, and I wanted to be properly attired. It’s got me thinking though (always dangerous) – once it’s been out to the Vintage Night, will I actually wear this dress again? Of course I want to say yes. I love the fabric, I love the style, it fits me very well… but my dressmaking history reveals that there’s a strong chance of it just living in the wardrobe and only coming out for Dressing Up Occasions.

October 2012

This one (Simplicity 1755) was made in October 2012, for a friend’s wedding. It’s been worn precisely once since then, to a smart-ish occasion at work. It’s comfortable, it’s soft (I saved up for ages to buy the bamboo and cotton blend fabric), it has my favourite raglan sleeves, it even has pockets. It would take me precisely two minutes to replace the annoying hook and eye at the front collar with a few stitches that would prevent it from popping open all the time. And yet it sits in the wardrobe, unloved.

March 2013

I made this dress specifically to wear to a 1940s event (although it’s from a 1950s pattern), but the combination of the fabric being a bit too stiff and Paul telling me that the print looks like curtains has put me off it entirely. I don’t think this one’s ever been out of the wardrobe except for this single occasion, and it’s currently hanging on the back of the sewing room door waiting to be chopped up and turned into zipped pouches and headscarves. Particularly frustrating, as I went out of my way to find a vintage pattern in my size (1950s 18½, as it turns out), and I put a lot of effort into the hand-stitched buttonholes, covered buttons, and french cuffs. The knitted turban though, which I was still sewing together minutes before we left the house for the day, has actually been worn a lot.

Simplicity 3968 (1952)

Even this 1952 pinafore, which I absolutely LOVE for its frankly ridiculous pockets, has only been out of the wardrobe a couple of times. In this instance it’s because the fabric is a linen blend, and there’s miles and miles of skirt to iron before it looks smart enough for work. (And then I sit on the bus for half an hour to get there, and immediately scrunch it up again!)

So what do I actually wear, if I’m not wearing these? Well, mostly I go to work wearing a pair of cord trousers, a jumper and a big scarf. Maybe leggings and a jersey dress. (And a big scarf.) At home I usually pootle about in the World’s Oldest Jeans, and one of the very long jumpers that my Mum knitted for me about twenty years ago.

February 2011

Otherwise, I wear this. Admittedly I’m not usually festooned with small parrots, but I made this coat in the summer of 2009, and it’s been worn endlessly since then. The silk yarn for the hat was a wedding gift, and the resulting Wurm (Silk Wurm, get it? *groan*) has barely left my head. Also featured: the ubiquitous hoody, and of course a scarf. Every now and then I think I should make myself a new coat, but the thought of not having this one is somehow a bit too much. I think I’m going to have to look out for some more pink spotty needlecord, so that I can replicate it when it finally does wear out.

So, back to ME MADE MAY, which was allegedly the point of this post!

I do actually wear at least one item of clothing that I’ve made myself (even if it’s only a knitted hat) almost every day, so that in itself won’t be the challenge for me. What I want to do is pay more attention to the handmade items that I do and don’t wear, and to try and understand why.

Is it too uncomfortable? Did I make it for an occasion that simply doesn’t come around very often? It is too cold to wear for work, too restrictive to wear for a long time, does it make me feel as though I’ve accidentally left the house in fancy dress? Did I make it for myself, or for the Imaginary Claire in my head who’s twenty years younger, two stone lighter, and at least four inches taller than me? Did I actually want to wear this garment, or did I see the construction process as an interesting challenge?

Hopefully by the end of May I’ll have a clearer idea of the things I do and don’t wear, and the reasons why. Perhaps it’ll give me a good reason to get rid of some of the least likely to be sewn patterns from my stash… although it seems more likely that I’ll be inspired to buy some new ones!