Sewing With Purpose and Repurpose

One thing Me-Made-May has brought to my attention is I have a serious lack of me-made basics! I set about to change that this week, starting with the Plantain Tee from Deer and Doe. I've had this pattern for a while and never really got around to making it, but I really enjoyed seeing all the shirts that came out of the  Plantain Challenge . I picked up a jersey reminant, I'm not sure what exactly the composition is but its soooo soft and I never want to take it off. I got my boyfriend to take photos while we were out today, and all of them are unusable! He is a BAD photographer. I cropped out the camera strap in this awkward action shot because otherwise there would be no photos. Thank goodness for self timer photo shoots! I haven't been taking daily photos of my me made may outfits, but I have been keeping up with it! I wore my Morris Blazer and a knit Chloe Dress I recently dug out of the UFO pile to the Canadian Tulip Festival last week! I want to r...

I was really excited when I saw this pattern release a couple weeks ago, I was just finishing up an exam and paper for my last class EVER and bought it as a treat for finishing everything. Reading other blog's it looks like its been a pattern a long time coming! I'm glad I'm around for the release! Also I want to point out a small change to the blog, I'm using the google+ commenting system now, so if I respond to someone's comment they actually get a notification. That is a huge flaw with blogger and it drives me nuts I used a ponte/double knit my mom had leftover from another project in chocolate brown. I would never pick out something brown, fabric or RTW, but now I'm really glad I have it. It goes with black AND navy, while not being gray (I have so many gray clothes) I had quite a bit of trouble easing in the sleeves, I suspect it is because the fabric I used is too thick for the pattern. You can see above that the seam is kinda wavy, I had to squi...

Me-made-may is finally here, but I suddenly have a wrench thrown into my plans. I had originally planned to wear one me made piece a day and hoped to get a lot of wear out of my fun cotton dresses, but it looks like I'll be in the lab doing messy stuff and I don't want to ruin any of my clothes! I'll just do the best I can. I'm sure I can get by just wearing my Watson bras for a month :) Now for the main attraction! I'm not one to have a "stash" of fabric (I like having a project in mind before I buy), but I have had a couple pieces that I loved too much to pass up or were gifted to me that I've been waiting to find the PERFECT pattern for. One of these was a butterfly print cotton my mom brought to me in England, and it made it all the way back to Canada because I couldn't find a pattern to do it justice. WELL THE WAIT IS OVER! Enjoying my almond milk chai at city hall Lekala #4282 finally won as the pattern of choice. The print is pretty ...

I think I might be overdoing it on the Watson Bras. I have made 8 so far, 5 for myself and 3 for friends. I prooobbably don't need anymore for the time being, and I'm thinking of switching to the underwear pattern and making 5 pairs so I can have pretty sets. I've decided to do Me-Made-May this year and I'm thinking this new abundance of Watson's make it a hell of a lot easier! What I like to sew doesn't really align with what I buy RTW and wear on a daily basis (hilarious novelty print dresses don't look cute with steel-toe boots) so I think  good chunk of the me-made pieces are going to be undergarments and athletic gear. The three top pairs in the photo are my 3 new ones. The snakeskin one is the true to the pattern, but I've made slight variations to the other two. The white floral one is my favourite. I am absolutely in love with the fabric! I made a silly mistake when ordering the straps. I totally didn't look at the width and wa...

My closet. So I have a long standing love affair with quilting cotton, I know some people frown upon sewing garments out of quilting cotton, but the patterns are just so much better . I can hardly stand to walk into a store that has quilting cottons and walk away empty handed, I feel like I need to own those bright colourful patterns! I have found the perfect pattern that for my obsession: The Tate Top . I know I made this pattern in my last post, but I didn't realize its full potential for quilting cotton hoarding until this project. I can squeeze out a Tate Top in my size in a half meter of fabric!!!! (if one of the panels is upside down) This justifies soooo many future quilting cotton purchases for me I can hardly wait. I don't need to buy like 3m for a dress, I can spend just ~$7 to satisfy my needs! I got this fabric at  Needlework on James St N in Hamilton Ontario. I was drawn to it first by the bright colours, but the little bees hidden in the mystery frui...

Last weekend a few friends and I got together to sew pencil skirts! My friends are interesting in getting into sewing, so I promised I'd help them out and we'd pick an easy pattern to go through together. Two of these friends have a pretty extreme waist to hip ratio (we try to balance things on one friend's butt, Kim Kardashian style), and a common complaint I get is that its really hard to find pencil skirts and dresses to fit their bodies. So when I saw the free (!!!) Lekala pattern #5088 three seamed pencil skirt, I knew it was the perfect pattern. With Lekala patterns, you input your measurements and a pattern is custom drafted for you and a pdf pattern is emailed to you 10 minutes later. The sewing party was very successful, one friend was having machine troubles so fell behind, but the rest of us all had some fit issues to work out so we finished at the same time! As wonderful as the personalized measurements seemed, something as form fitting as a pencil skirt is ...

Before I get started into my post I wanted to share a neat photo collection I stumbled upon, Christopher Payne's "Textiles" collection . The photos are so fascinating! I love seeing the technology that goes into the materials for my favourite past-time, and the colours in the photos are absolutely delicious. Doesn't this look like it should be cotton candy, not fabric?? Back to business! This was my last sewing with non-purpose dress of 2015, first and last! (Hopefully) I had just walked into fabricland, saw this gorgeous stuff on sale for $3 a meter (!!!) and had to have it, even though I didn't really have a plan for it. My original idea for it was to make a long collared shirt-dress with the white border at the bottom. However, I had a friend who was feeling a bit down in the dumps so I asked his opinion to get his mind off things. He's very into minimalist and edgy fashion and I thought he'd really like the fabric. He was very adamant that it...