Me-Made-May Week 2

Here are the me-made items I wore this week:

• my blue tiered skirt 
• my Lady Skater dress
• my navy blue gathered skirt
• Geneva underwear (x2)
• my Washi dress (x2)
• my brown and yellow floral skirt
• my grey lace-edged sweater(I don't remember how many times)
• my Lofoten sweater (I don't remember how many times)

Me-Made-May Week 1

(Really week 1 plus one day, because it makes more sense for weeks to begin on Monday and end on Sunday.)

So far I've been successful in wearing at least one me-made garment each day.  Here's what I've worn so far:

• my damask skirt 
• my denim skirt (x2)
• my blue tiered skirt 
• my Lofoten sweater (x2)
• Geneva underwear (x3, obviously not the same pair)
• my brown and yellow floral skirt
• my grey lace-edged sweater (x3)
• my blue floral refashioned top (After I wrote that post about it, I went back and narrowed the front neckline so there's no chance of my bra peeking out)

A few things I've noticed so far: most of the clothing I've sewn for myself are skirts and dresses for warm weather.  I think I only have one re-fashioned top, and I haven't made any long pants or leggings.  This works well in my current location (I live in the hot humid South) but won't work so well once I move to the Midwest this summer, and have to deal with real winter.  

A green giraffe dress! With buttons!

My niece's favorite animal is the giraffe.  And she is currently fascinated with buttons.  She recently asked her mom for a green giraffe dress with buttons.  So they went to the fabric store to look for green giraffe fabric, but the closest thing they could find was a flannel with yellow giraffes.

It just so happens that I also love giraffes, and I happened to have in my stash a cut of fabric with green and blue giraffes on it, together with a coordinating polka-dot.

They became an Oliver + S Jump Rope dress.  I made view A, in size 2T with some extra length - I cut the bodice on the 3T line, and then added some more to the skirt length.  I think it was at least 2", but I wasn't super-precise about it and I don't quite remember exactly what I did.

The dress has SEVEN buttons.  Three functional buttons on the placket, plus one on each sleeve tab and one on each pocket.  My niece was thrilled.  She immediately asked me to help her put it on (thank goodness it fit, and has some length for her to grow into) and mentioned several times later in the day that her dress has giraffes on it.

I've never sewn a placket before, but it wasn't too bad!  I used the Sew Mama Sew sew-along and it was very helpful.  I also asked for help estimating fabric requirements in the Oliver+S forums, and Nicole and the other ladies there were very helpful!

All in all, I am thrilled with how this little dress turned out and I had a lot of fun sewing it!

Me-Made-May

I decided to participate in Me-Made May this year.  Here's my pledge:

I, Katherine of willknitformath.blogspot.com, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '16. I endeavour to wear at least one me-made or refashioned item each day for the duration of May 2016. Underwear will count!

I think this will be a very doable challenge - especially since I have two pairs of me-made underwear and am in the middle of sewing six more.  The underwear will be key later in the month when I'm backpacking for a few days (I plan on wearing my standard RTW backpacking clothing, but I will wear my me-made underwear).  I have several skirts that I've sewn, including one that I refashioned from a pair of jeans.  I also have a few dresses, including one that I plan to wear for my Ph.D. hooding in two weeks.  And of course I have several handknitted sweaters and shawls.  And I  use cloth menstrual pads that I sewed myself, so those will also get worn at some point.