Me-Made-June '11: Join Me!!!

Here we go people!!!!!!!!!!!!! Time for the latest me-made/self-stitched challenge invented by yours truly and open to anyone who wishes to play along! Many thanks for those who helped me figure out what to call the damn thing. With that decision dealt with, I was able to undertake the most important of tasks: choosing the right font to make the logo. Ta daaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

You like? Good. Honestly though, I don't choose the font: the font chooses me. My role is more dowsing than anything. Anyways, onto the challenge itself...

What is Me-Made-June '11?

In the same vein as Me-Made May (2010), Self-Stitched-September (2010) and Me-Made-March '11 before it, MMJune '11 is an opportunity to pledge to wear your handmade creations more than you usually would during the month of June 2011. By 'handmade creations', I mean anything sewn, knitted, crochetted, refashioned, upcycled, re-made, etc. by your own fair hands.

Why should I take part?

(I cannot improve on my explanation of Me-Made-March '11, so if this paragraph looks familiar, don't worry, you're not going crazy.) The purpose of Me-Made-June '11 is to encourage those of us who make and/or refashion clothes to actually wear them our their everyday lives. Rather than spend hours on projects that then languish unworn and unloved in the bottom of a drawer, I believe we should be proud of our achievements and creations. Let's show ourselves as well as everyyone else, that our efforts are more than just a pastime, that we have been slowly developing valueable skills that we can use to actually clothe ourselves, damn it! Let's learn to love our creations, to look past any flaws we can see in them (that probably no-one else would even notice). Why not take an opportunity to learn about what garments work best for our bodies and lifestyles so we can make more informed choices when sewing/knitting/refashioning etc. in the future? Participating in Me-Made-June '11 can do all of these things and more!

How does MMJune '11 work?

All you have to do is copy the pledge below and post it in the comments section of this post adapted to include your details and the personal specification of your challenge. For example, you could challenge yourself to wearing one self-stitched/refashioned garment a day, or if you have been sewing/knitting/etc. for a long time, you may decide to challenge yourself to two self-stitched/refashioned garment a day, or even more! Maybe you wish to only include refashions in this challenge: no problem! Perhaps you wish to include jewellery and accessories you have made: equally, no problem! This is YOUR challenge, write the script any way you want, just remember: IT IS A CHALLENGE. If you already wear a lot of self-stitched/refashioned items, think how you can up the ante. If you are fairly new to garment creating and/or re-working, make this a challenge, but don't make it impossible for yourself. If you are confused and could do with some pointers, you could check out the pledged in the comments section of MMMar '11 sign-up post to see what others have pledged in the past.

'I, (insert name here and blog address if you have one), sign up as a participant of Me-Made-June '11. I endeavour to wear
......................................................... each day for the duration of June 2011'

If you have a blog, re-post your pledge so your readers and followers can see what you are up to. Please include a link to this post so other can also sign-up if they are interested. If there's one thing I've learnt from these challenges, the more people involved, the bigger the party!

Closer to the start of June I will create a MMJune '11 Flickr group for those who wish to to post their daily outfits consisting of or including self-stitched/self-refashioned garments. What out for the announcement. Please note: participation in the Flickr group is entirely optional. If you wish to participate in MMJune '11 but don't want to be involved in the Flickr group and/or you don't have a blog, or you don't wish to take daily photos, that's absolutely fine!!! The point of this is to challenge yourself and have fun, hopefully learning something from the process. How you chose to participate is as individual as you are.

Coming very soon will be a blog button/widget of the MMMJune '11 logo that you can add to your blog!

Happy challenging! xxx

So Long, Ceylon

Never the quickest off the mark, I'd had the Colette Patterns Ceylon dress pattern in my collection for about a year before I got round to giving it a go. To be fair, I had been waiting for the right fabric to appear, which it did in the form of a pair of spotty navy cotton sateen curtains I found in a charity in Maldon (holler, Miss P!) Autumn just gone. Maybe you aren't aware of how I feel about cotton sateen? Strongly. Anyways, I'm getting off track.

I ordered the Ceylon pattern along with the Macaron when 'Santa' (AKA, my mate Anna) perceptively bought me a Colette Patterns voucher a couple of Christmases ago. I'd fallen pretty hard for the Ceylon design when it first came out and not long after some nice versions seemed to be appearing out there in sewing-blogland (Sølvi's being my favourite to date). So when the spotty navy sateen came into my life providing sufficient fabric for this fairly fabric-hungry project for a mere £4, I felt it was time to finally crack open the Ceylon. I think I began prepping the pattern last December, and it's taken me until April to finish. This was not a quick project.

Why did it take so long? Because this dress is so damn involved and problematic and I lost momentum. It has approximately 3 squillion pieces, with heaps of gathering and top stitching, all of which meant it was always going to be pretty time consuming. But I think most of my motivation wained when I found some flaws in this pattern which needed some time to tackle. I found that the front yokes married up poorly with the front panel below at the sides seam area. Also, in my opinion, there are a couple of problems with the way the sleeve pattern piece was drafted, like it was not possible to hem properly because no allowance for the sleeve seam angle had been made, and the gathering of the sleevehead would not have been even if you matched up the shoulder point notches. One of the back sections puffed out quite a bit, which needed unpicking and repositioning (in a similar vein to my Macaron, as it goes). I also think the skirt shaping at the side seams was somewhat bizarre, so I took that in to prevent it sticking out oddly. These last two issues were definately emphasised, but certainly not caused, by my fabric, which is fairly thick.

The final issue I had with the fit of this dress is probably not the fault of the pattern, however. The wide waist panel in this design means that the skirt flares out from quite a low point. I have a naturally high waist which means that the bottom of that waist panel hits me firmly on my hips and close to my widest point. I tried to counter this to some extent in the very beginning by cutting out one size for the top and graduating out to the next size up at the waist, but this only helped so far. I would, of course, have found this out had I made a toile/muslin of this dress before cutting my final version. But with all those panel pieces, you'd have to be something of a sadist of possess the patience of a buddist monk to make a dry-run of this style! So the waist doesn't doesn't fit fantastically, which I think is a shame considering the rest of the garments looks pretty good. Hopefully, with so much going on with this style, there is too much detail to draw the eye to notice the ill-fitting waist area.

So, what IS good about this dress? Well, the fabric is lovely. Such a lovely quality and slightly weightiness of the fabric feels really nice and special to wear. The red satin piping I added to the yoke area, although a bit of a nightmare to apply (sharp angles + piping + lots of layers of fabric at certain points = extensive headache) really emphasises, what is, to me the best feature of this style. The red buttons (self-covered using scraps of the lining of my winter coat) were time consuming to make, but complement the piping well and make the dress pop.

I wore this dress for the first time to the Handmade Brighton shop's birthday party and it received lots of compliments, possibly more than any other garment on its debut, so maybe it's actually fine, and it's just that the rawness of the troubles is still too fresh for me to have a balanced view. I am planning on a second outting in it this weekend coming, so I'm hoping me and my Ceylon will be able to put our troubles behind us and become close friends afterall.

June Challenge: Named!!!

Thanks everyone who contributed to yesterday's debate on what the hell to call the next Me-Made/Self-Stitched challenge coming up in June. It soon became clear, however, that there isn't a single name that everyone prefers and that, as with everything in life, I'm not going to be able to please everyone!

This weekend is a beautiful sunny bank holiday here in UK. Yesterday I was out and about, doing this and that and making the most of the lovely weather. I have one of those smart phones which (sometimes, when I feels like it) delivers me my emails so I was able to read your comments as they came in. So many opinions, so many convincing arguements! I was all, ''Ooh yes, good point', then 'Ah yes, that makes sense, then 'Indeed, I hear you'.

Initially, 'Just-Sew-June' seemed like the strongest contender, but others began to echo my concerns that it may feel excluding to crocheters and knitters. Plus, and this is my biggest concern with 'Just-Sew-June', I may suggest that this challenge is about spending most of June hunched over your sewing machine churning out garments for the sake of it. These challenges are about encouraging everyone to wear and enjoy the existing fruits of their labour; if they want to spend some time adding to their self-stitched arsenal for their own personal enjoyment, then go for gold, but it's not a specific criteria. Other potentials came up, like 'Just-Stitch-June', 'Self-Made-June', 'Handmade-June', 'Own-Sewn-June' and my personal favourite of the new contenders: 'J'ai créé ce, June'! But I can't help but think we are going a bit off-piste (plus most accessible fonts don't have the accents needed for 'créé'!).

So, I'm taking it back Old-School style and running with Me-Made-June '11. Apparantly my main concern with that was, to quote myself, 'It abandones all alliteration'. Umm, was I suffering from sun-stroke?! What's Me-Made then?! Plus, the most recent comment on yesterday's post, AKA the Last Word on this matter, was by KC Sheehan (the creator of the popular 'Just-Sew-June' variant) who stated that she prefers Me-Made-June anyhow. Little point in arguing with that, is there?!

I'll create a sign up pledge so everyone can begin pledging to participate by the end of the week, and make a blog widget/button available. So those who were racking their brains to come up with a name, stand down! Enjoy your weekend peops!

xxx

Me-Made/Self-Stitched Challenges 2011: Update!!!

Hi peops! Time for a bit of housekeeping. With Me-Made-March '11 in the bag, I realise it's high time I officially disclosed my plans for the rest of the year regarding the organisation of more Me-Made/Self-Stitched challenges.

Lots of lovely peops have been commenting that they would like to take part in further challenges this year and have been asking if I will be hosting Me-Made-May '11. As discussed on the MMMar '11 Flickr group, it has generally been agreed that May is too close to the recently completed March challenge; that there will not be enough time to implement the lessons learnt from MMMar '11 by those who participated and wish to do so again. Afterall, there seems to be little point in simply recreating March, same garments, same outfits, same photos. I think everyone who got involved in the previous challenges will want to sense some progress and development if they chose to partipate again. So, I'm going to organise another challenge in June.

June should provide significantly different weather than March for most parts of the globe, I'd imagine, which should give the next challenge a different flavour to the last. The problem is: what to call it?! As fond as I clearly am of alliteration, there just isn't anything as catchy as Me-Made-March/May or Self -Stitched-September. So I need your help people. I've got three options so far, and would love to hear your thoughts on them or any other suggestions you can come up with:

Me-Made-June: Abandones all alliteration, but it 'does what it says on the tin' (do you have to be from the UK to get that cultural reference, I wonder?). By which I mean, everyone already aquainted with these challenges will know what it's about at a glance.

Just-By-Me-June: This name, IMO, would lend itself very well to a more hardcore version of these challenges, i.e, the participants only wear stuff made by them. But I don't want this challenge in any way to exclude those who plan on challenging themselves to wearing one self-stitched garment per day.

Just-Sew-June: As suggested by MMMar '11 participant KC Sheehan. I like this one a lot but I was concerned it might imply that knitted/crochetted or any other form of me-mades aren't welcome. Am I over-analysising this?!

So, your thoughts are clearly very necessary on this naming matter. Please comment to help me get the ball rolling for the next challenge. I have the very important job coming up of choosing the right font for the task!

FYI, I also plan to do this again in September, so relax, I've got that name covered!

Knitwear Refashion #3

May I present to you the next installment of my knitwear refashioning series. I made this last week and have managed to squeeze in a couple of wears so far and I have to say, I love it! I love that it took me little more than one lunch time to complete it; I love that I have been able to create a 1940's inspired knitwear silhouette without having to learn how to knit; I love that it has nautical overtones; AND I love that is cost me absolutely nada.

Just like my knitwear refashion #2, this project began life as an unloved second-hand mens Marks and Spencer fine knit wool jumper. The original garment was bizarre (and rare) in that it showed absolutely no signs of wear in any form aside from thinning on one of the elbows, and a totally busted out hole for the seond elbow! What on earth has this dude been doing in his jumper?! I can't imagine....

Anyways, this suited my purposes just fine because I had decided I wanted a 1940's inspired little jumper with short slightly puffed sleeves, so I could harvest the rest of the good quality garment and cut away the ratty parts of the sleeves.

Unlike my knitwear refashion #2 which I cut to include the ribbed hem section, this time I decided to cut the new garment keeping the original neckhole intact. The original garment had the right type of neck for what I was aiming for, plus had a nice shoulder yoke panel that would look cool incorporated into my new garment's design.

Because my pattern pieces were placed high up on the original garment to retain the neck, I had to reattach the ribbing section but cutting it carefully away and overlocking it back on to the hem of the front and back. Similarly, when I cut the sleeves out of the top part of the orginial sleeves, I also harvested the original cuff ribbing which were overlocked to bottom of my new sleeves. The sleeve heads are slightly gathered to get that 1940's shoulder-centric kind of look. Plus, because the cuff ribbing was shorter than the bottom of my newly cut sleeve pieces, I had to stretch the ribbng as I overlocked it onto the sleeves so this naturally emphasised the 'puffiness' of the new sleeves. (Note: I am wearing my stripey long sleeved T-shirt underneath, this jumper does not have mad, contrasting sleeves attached!)

After finding it in a bag of donated knitwear at work, I actually had the original jumper sitting on the shelve close to my work station for a week or so, waiting for inspiration to strike. I knew such a plain garment would need some sort of embellishment, but because the majority of the garment was in such good nick, there didn't seem any point in replacing sections of it or messing with it too much. But without some kind of embellishment planned, I just wasn't inspired to begin refashioning it!

At any rate, I came up with the idea to make a little fake pocket flap (I'd recently made some shorts for work that had fake pocket flaps in self-fabric) made from some scraps of an old mens shirt. The colour of the blue stripe in the shirt is more or less the same as the jumper, and the stripes give it a nautical vibe, which I'm clearly not going to reject!

As is so often the case, I find my sewing mojo to be slightly out of season. Right now we have lovely warm weather here in Blightly, but I seem to be most vibed by creating myself a range of knitwear! Still, these knit tops will be doubt come into their own in the Autumn, or if we get some colder spells before Summer kicks in. I've got some more summery creations coming up next, but I still have one or two knitwear refashions planned before my mojo flips again.

Social Sewing

Hi peops, hope you had a creative weekend. I must admit mine was spent pretty much neck-deep in creative individuals. A very pleasant situation in which to be. Let me illuminate...

Saturday: Oh, looky here! Some gorgeous sewing ladies who have come out to play! On Saturday I was lucky enough to spend a lovely day hanging with these hotties right here in B-town.

Left to Right we have Shivani, Stevie, Jane and Karen. I've only experienced it a few times previously, but I find it both strange and thrilling meeting people in the flesh that I've e-met beforehand. Of course, we all have one massive hobby (read: obsession) in common, but that's not a guarantee that you will get on. But I can honestly say these are some seriously nice people and really lovely to be around.

Shhhh! Sewers in their natural territory...

There isn't much point in me giving a full account of the day's proceedings, because Karen has already written the perfect summary in her post here. But as Gin O'Clock was fast approaching, I was sad that the London-based ladies had to high-tail it back to the big smoke. All I can say is that I'm super-vibed about the next meet-up, Karen is rapidly becoming the Pied Piper of sewers!

Sunday: Patty, Lisa (my Colleague in Craft and fellow Craftaganza organiser) and I hit up the 1st Birthday celebrations of Handmade Brighton, a very awesome shop which sells and supports local creative talent. I've recently become one of the sellers myself, but I'll expand on this fantastic enterprise in the near future because it really does warrant its own post.

A lovely time was spent supping cava, nomming cake and chit-chatting with heaps of interesting local designer/makers and their lovely plus-ones in the newly refurbished basement of the shop. Evidently I was too busy with the aforementioned activities to remember to document the event, so only managed to grab this one pic (of Lisa and myself above) as everyone was being hurded out into the night towards the next venue. Which turned out to be a great Blues night (although it was actually pretty green):

This weekend was the perfect counter-balance to a working week spent in studio with just one other person generally focussed on the physical activity of sewing. Personally, I need near-isolation to be at my most productive, but spending time with people who regularly engage in creating is such a boast to my own drive to create. If I worked in a big busy studio with colleagues flitting here and there involved in different tasks, I wonder how much (or, I suspect, little) I would get done. But the time I spend in the company of other makers is so valueable to me, I realise I must make more of a conscious effort to make these connections. It's akin to cake. I'm not sure I'm eating enough home-made cake either (enter 'food for thought' pun here).

New-Old Bag

Today you may expect nothing as intense as Wednesday's blog post. I will not be attempting to uncover the truths of our modern day dilemmas. I will merely be showing you my new bag.

I didn't even make this bag, my boss did. We'd been working pretty damn hard for a few weeks in a row and she decided that we deserved something for ourselves (that, and I suspect she was fed up with seeing my mangy shoulder bag about the place) so whilst whipping up a batch of Lola bags for the range, she made an extra two.


I was allowed to pick my own fabric, so I found the remnant of red/white/blue tweed that was leftover from my highwaisted shorts, my thoughts being that the fabric would look awesome with the blue and red in my Winter coat and fit generally with my nautical colour scheme. The leather sections were harvested from an unwanted 80's brown leather coat. The other elements of these bags, the twill lining, the plasticised fabric interlining and even the zips, were also all donated from either individuals or companies. Basically the glue was the only thing that was bought new to create these bags, and possibly the belt buckle hardware which attaches the long straps to the sides of the bags, but I forgot to ask about those.


I'm massively in love with my new bag. Considering how many years I clung on to my last ratty shoulder bag before it was finally surpassed, I imagine I'll be rocking this for a very long time to come. It just feels so 'meaty', you know? Weighty and secure. Plus, I love the zip closer which means I no longer need to be quite so consciously paranoid about my possessions on public transport or in crowds. It's cool to be able to wear it either over my shoulder or across my body, which should be better for my ailing upper-back/shoulders.

I would love to be able to offer this creation up as something that most sewers and refashionistas could attempt themselves. But alas, I wouldn't recommend trying to stitch all these tough elements at home. My boss uses an industrial sewing machine which she's pimped so it can accommodate all but the thickest types of leather. I tried using it (this and this are the fruits of my swear-riddled attempts) and it was a pretty unpleasant and scary experience! Soft, thin leather can usually go through domestic machines (you made need some silicon spray or something to help the machine foot actually grip the leather), but I wouldn't recommend the heart-stopping clunks of breaking needles that you'll be inviting if attempting the thicker varieties!