Me Made May 2015

I have signed up to the challenge:


'I, Jennifer Shaw of Jennifer's Sewing Space, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '15. I endeavour to wear at least one me made garment each day for the duration of May 2015'

I'm excited! I didn't feel ready to participate last year for a number of reasons however this year I think that I have enough me-made garments to make an interesting challenge (and that are of an acceptable quality to wear.)

Particular events which make this an interesting challenge are that we are away on holiday at the end of the month: to Ireland. However more specifically to a festival. Right now I don't really have any festival gear and it was number 4 on my 2015 sewing plan. So I think I'll be doing a touch of research into the ins and outs of no-camping-required festivals. This festival plus associated holiday takes up a full week in May and I'm excited :-D I also have an adult job now - and whereas there are no hard and fast rules on uniform - I feel more inclined to wear something more formal than my usual crazy print fit and flare style that I seem to have adopted!

Items in my handmade wardrobe which currently see a lot of wear include my trusty minoru jacket:

I think this goes with about 90 % of my wardrobe. I'm still working on starting my plan for a spring jacket - however as spring has only really just arrived I don't feel so bad. I have my pattern and fabric ready I just need to make one alteration to the front jacket piece then it's all good to go.

another item which has found it's way into immediate rotation is my Julia Cardigan:

Clearly I don't wear it with a party dress every day however it goes with, again, 90 % of my wardrobe and definitely fits the work appropriate criteria that I'm looking to build!

There are also a few items which I hope to finish up before the end of the first week of May - just to give me more choice. Two of these are cut and ready to sew, I have two patterns ready to cut the fabric from. One of the patterns that I'm hoping to have a bash at (and is the one I have traced pieces for) is this simplicity 1467. I got this free with a sewing magazine this month and think that this pattern alone could fill a few of my pre-May gaps.

Have a great weekend everyone, this week has been insanely busy with work for me yet I find myself enjoying what i do more now than since I worked in the shop/warehouse until 2009. Thats not to say I haven't enjoyed my studies until now - just that I prefer this :-) - so I shall celebrate 6 pm tonight with a large glass of red wine!! Has anyone else signed up for me made may 2015?

Jennifer xx

Sewing Plans 2015

So its January the 12th and my sewing machine is still sitting neglected on the table. I have cut out a full pattern though so i'm hoping i'll get to relax tonight with a bit of sewing and have a brand new garment for Saturday night. We're off to a 60th so what better excuse to make a new dress? I'm going down a slightly different route from normal so i'll let you all know how it turns out. Over the weekend I dug up the rest of our new year photos and found some good ones! This is one of my favourites:

Needless to say I felt like a princess in this! I found myself with serious wardrobe envy and managed to borrow steal the most awesome Arabian handmade dress ever for an impromptu photo shoot. I also got a great one of the two of us:

I also found the evidence of our bobsleding:

But suffice to say you didn't come here to read about my holiday right? So after a very productive 2014 in which I learned a whole bunch of new skills and tackled a whole host of garments including 3 jackets - what are my plans for 2015?

1. A new jacket for spring!

After tackling the Robson for my mum last year I am going to take learned skills and make a second for myself. I have bought the fabric already, I just need to trace off the larger size and check on any other alterations.

2. My birthday dress! No idea of the style yet, but we got free tickets to the football. So a warm one which will be pub appropriate before afterwards :-D Is the end of March too late in the year for a sweater dress? Can one have too many tartan dresses? This will be a Scotland friendly and the ideas are needing seriously narrowed!

3. We might be having some friends over in May. What better way to dress the guest room than with a handmade quilt? I'm not sure yet if I'll just make the air bed guest happy or if I will tackle our king sized bed!

4. Festival gear. We are off to a Rory Gallacher tribute festival (also in May).

Click image for source

I got the concert tee in the perfect pattern parcel last year so this could come in handy :-). I will wait a while before buying fabric though, hopefully some lighter jersey fabrics will be in the stores by then!

5. A swimsuit :-D (Potentially also festival gear :-p)

Source

 I assembled the bombshell pattern at some point last year but then somehow it got shunted off the top of the pile. I can't imagine that anyone has ever had this problem. ahem.

6. My final target, trousers!

Source

I bought the Thurlows in the PDF sale before Christmas. They have been partially cut out. This will be my first fly fastening as well as first trouser experiment. I'm expecting a number of muslins for this.

So there we go. I don't think this is too ambitious, and purposefully only set a few targets however only time will tell!

I love reading posts with peoples plans - please leave a link in the comments if you have written such a post

Jen x

Tilly and the Buttons Lilou dress

Meet my Lilou.... or rather the Philatelist Dress! (I've given a name to a dress :-O it feels weird however apt)

Lilou dress at culzean castle!

Based on my measurements I cut a size 5 - forgetting to check the 'finished garment sizes' and ended up with a dress so big that I could have fitted a friend inside too :-(. So after 3 hours a bit of hand sewing and a full tub of pins I had a dress which fitted!

you cant expect to go down the west coast and not get attacked by wind!

The fabric is a lightweight cotton picked up in mandors (as usual) for only £6.99/m. I only picked up 2m of it as it was originally going to be something else...so had to change the skirt from the pleated version suggested to the clemence gathered version from near the beginning of the book. this dress therefore is a marriage of clemence and lilou. a match made in heaven methinks :p

so as a result of all the pinning and adding extra bust darts, the back and front waist differ in height by about an inch. this is a 'feature' of the dress that definitely bothered me - until i woe it out! I received a compliment from my ultimate critic, my mother and when I asked her "but what about teh wonky waist" she said "well if you didnt tell me I wouldn't have known". BOOM. the dress is a win! I think this will become my travel to the states dress when I go in September.

well someone looks awkward...

I love the stamps on the detail and even placed the fabric so I would have queen Vic slap bang in the centre front - i didn't really mind about not matching the pattern at the sides though because its rather busy and so interesting it doesn't (in my mind) make a difference.

rather awfully taken picture ahem...

I think my favourite stamp print is this Hannover one... although it did take a while to realise that it was Hannover NH not Hannover DE :-( oops!

I'm definately going to make this up again - this time though i will line the skirt too so i don't need to wear a slip. :-) - oh and make a muslin so i don't end up with a wonky waist (or maybe just try the size 4....)! I think i'll also try the pleated skirt variant too.

Has anyone else made up Tilly's Lilou?

even my vogue coat made an appearance!

 So I went to the table tennis today for the commonwealth games - it was really great actually - we didnt arrive in time to get a seat to see the scotland ladies so we went around and saw the indian vs NZ ladies and the malaysian vs northern ireland ladies and it was amazing! we also saw the trinidad and tobago men in the second session - its reminded me how much i enjoyed it back in school! It's so fun to watch too. We're going to the boxing tomorrow too can't wait! The whole town is buzzing its such a great experience :-D

outtakes!! haha i look horrified!

Take Care guys is anyone else watching the games?

JCS :-)

Finished Lolita paterns Sugar Plum

May I present to you - Sugar Plum!

I thought i would post this up this afternoon seing as sewing indie month was drawing to a close. This was the first time I had used a PDF pattern and to be honest it wasn't as bad as i was expecting! (bar the fact my table is faaar to small to construct the pattern on!!) although i still prefer having a paper pattern as they store so nicely!



I cut a size 10 and graded out to a size 12 on the waist on reflection i didn't need to cut the 12 as there was so much of the skirt I had to cut out. I removed about 3/4 of an inch (evenly over the centre front) and then another 1 1/4" from the centre back pieces. You can kind of see in the pic below that i still need to fix that little runkle in the back still. When I do that i think i'll also fix that back seam - I get the sneaking suspicion the tension wasn't set right

Runkle in the back skirt

The main changes made when constructing sugar plum were to omit the pockets and the zip - there was no need to put it in as the dress fit fine without it and I could easily get it on and off without the zip. and in saying that I don't even need to undo the buttons..... The pockets were also omitted because I didn't want to worry about lumps and bumps due to a forgotten tissue!

 

The fabric I used for this was cotton lawn for the top - leftover from a previous project (which ended up as a fail :-( ) and a ponte knit for the skirt. Both of which were purchased from Minerva Crafts in two separate shopping trips.

Strange instagrammed light effects!

and another picture of me lurking in the close. There was seriously no better place to take these pictures and my on call cameraman wasn't being all that compliant...

and finally it's good to see glasgow gearing up for the games - george square was getting dressed up at lunchtime anyways and our tickets arrived last week!

Have a good weekend guys - i'm off to the David Livingstone Centre :-)

JCS

MMMay

Although not actively taking part in MMMay2014, I have been using this month as my own time to reflect on the current state of my wardrobe and identify where the gaps lie and what I can sew to fill these gaps.

I wasn't intending on doing this however my daily uniform of skinny levi's was eaten by the tumble drier and so I had really little option. Thinking about Colette's Wardrobe Architect silhouettes, my evolving personal tastes and what I actually already own, I have been wearing as many of the clothes as I can that have not seen the light of day in a good year to determine why it is that I no longer wear these items. The reason mostly is that they do not flatter my shape. Younger me clearly got the colours right - no yellows or anything too pale - however I did not know how to style my body shape correctly.

Whereas I'm a pretty standard height and my bust and hips seem to fit smack bang on most of the pattern sizing guides I usually have to grade up about two sizes for my waist. Something I never considered before I started to sew my own clothes. Previous skirts I have bought like this one from River Island just hung there and to put it simply just looked dreadful the whole day I wore it. I had no shape and had a boyish figure.

On the positive however, I rediscovered my tailored wardrobe, fitted shirts, belts and pencil skirts, which nip in at the waist and of course peplum tops which provide an illusion of a more hourglass figure.

My dress wardrobe remained largely unscathed - it would appear that my range of day dresses and evening wear is pretty much spot on in the shape stakes - again this involves a number of very fitted styles - a mixture of asymmetric and strapless included as well as a number with peplums and belt loops. (Yes I have a dress wardrobe, Yes it is full, Yes I love it, No the boyfriend does not- I get the feeling it's life is limited). Other more relaxed styles here include fitted bodices with full skirts. As long as there is a waist the style seems to work.

Having determined the styles which I like and which I love wearing every day has helped me come up with a sewing plan of items which can replace the jeans and give me the styles I desire and not replace the forgotten wardrobe items!

The first on the list is to remould this skirt into a a more fitted version of itself - i love the belt loops and the band on the bottom so I think it will be a case of unpicking the waistband and removing some of the excess material.

Other items on my list include:

Image from www.simplicity.com

A retro shirt dress - fitted top with a full skirt

image from www.victorypatterns.com

The Ava pattern has been on my to do list for a while in the top version - again I think the peplum is flattering on my figure

Image from: www.colettepatterns.com

Another shirt dress. I love this style and think it fits with my desired silhouettes

Image from www.tillyandthebuttons.com

The lilou. this has gone in straight to the top - a perfect styling of fitted top - waist detail and full skirt.
So hopefully after some self assessment in the styling stakes i'll be able to give my wardrobe the overhaul it deserves and at the same time sew with some clearer direction. how does everyone else choose what they will sew?

I do have another make which has been finished a while however the sizing issues occurring from another holiday has prevented any picture taking of this one!

Happy Thursday all!

JCS