M3 2013 - day 11 & 12

In which our plucky heroine continues slow progress, and is grateful for a break in the weather...

Friday night I finished the grey pinafore, just under the wire for SWAP 2013, stitchery closed for that at midnight Friday. Technically my pinafores can be worn as sleeveless dresses, but I rarely do.

 There was really no way to get the planned wraparound apron completed in the time available (work life has a way of using up personal sewing time), since it was not only not a TNT pattern, but rather not a pattern at all, but a concept and a picture of a vintage garment from the 20's...

Safer indeed, and still quite useful, to trade a new dark grey pinafore for the "made before SWAP" black one, and trade out the apron as a bridge garment for a "made before SWAP" indigo cardigan sweater. This grey pinafore is made from a large textured cotton curtain from the As-Is bin at Ikea, said curtain a gift from some friends who snagged it knowing that sturdy pinafore fabric is always welcome, if it is in my color palette.

I have a very definite group of chosen colors for clothing; a limited palette makes getting dressed an easy thing, for most all the things in the wardrobe coordinate. Not everyone likes this, but our plucky heroine surely does... I was inspired by a graphic on The Vivienne Files (an extremely useful blog on wardrobe planning, though in a very different style than my own) to make my own personal color-graphic

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Saturday, (M3 - Day 11) was yet another unseasonably beastly hot day at almost 90°F, hence a lightweight rayon popover dress, this one in batik indigo nightsky patterning. Spent most of the day hiding inside, sewing like a madwoman; 'tis too hot to run the kiln, that will have to wait till either cooler weather, or the middle of the night. Fortunately there is plenty of sewing that needs done.

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Guess that the hens are actually both laying. The smaller brown egg is from the hen that lays most often, the odd long light one is from whichever hen only lays once in a while...

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Sunday was forecast to be much cooler, so I started the day in my floral top and black denim overall-pinafore, both part of SWAP 2013. The day ended up a lot warmer, so I switched out to a popover dress instead. Was an excellent productive day, with a lot more sewing, along with good social time with my pal Elfrida. Girl has wanted a sewing pal for a long time, and hopefully we can continue this on an ongoing basis...

M3 2013 - day 9 & 10

So yesterday, since it was another misplaced June day and nicely cloudy in the morning, I wore my black denim pinafore with my grey tee shirt. I also learned that it is better to take my M3 pictures early in the day, before the sun gets high in the sky, since if it is up enough to find a way between the porch and the house, it makes some very odd bright spots... like on the skirt of my pinafore.

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Today it is forecast to be close to 90°F. One layer will be all that is bearable. I chose to wear my one popover dress that is very colorful. Because I do not like to wear these colors anymore, this dress will last a long time. It is made from an assortment of linen fabrics, and has hand embroidered acorns and oak leaves around the neckline.

This dress originally started out to be SCA clothing, years ago, and then I decided that since the very bright colors are irredeemably modern (our ancestors did have bright colors too, but the colors available in natural dyestuff look different than the modern chemical ones) that it would not make me happy to wear it for my historic recreation events. I then modified my dress to change the sleeves, and to add pockets. There were no pockets in Viking Era clothes, pockets hadn't been invented. Back then folks either tied their EDC (everyday carry) to their belt, or hanging from their brooches, or tucked stuff into belt pouches, (or all of the above)

M3 2013 - day 7 + a little more textile stencil fun

Remember that stencil that our plucky heroine was working away on? Well it has been all cut out, and yesterday I used some of the motifs to decorate the neckline of a summertime tee shirt.

This one will be both part of my 2013 SWAP (substituting for the missing brown tee shirt) and the first of the projects for the summertime 6PAC. The fabric is a heather grey jersey, and the design is stenciled in indigo and brown paint. Once it is completed, it will coordinate with much of my current wardrobe, and will also look well, I hope, with the 6PAC pants I will be making later, from a textured weave linen in taupe and indigo. This brings my tee shirt total up to six.

Today's Me-Made-May clothing is this dress, which is one of my TNT "underdresses". These simple dresses are worn for most of the year underneath a pinafore, and take about five or six hours each to sew from cutting out the pieces to ready to go out in public. This particular one is made from some lightweight handwoven Guatemalan cotton ikat; to me the blue and white patterning looks like clouds. And, as often, my blue denim Me-Made hat, with all the hatband decorations...

M3 2013 - day 6

Today's dress is the very first one I made in this style, and as such, is getting rather too worn to be anything other than a housedress. I think that I look rather like my grandma here, something about the indigo and white print looks rather vintage to me...

Since it was also one of the first things I made using my serger, I discovered that while serging protects the edges from fraying, that a really fray prone fabric will fray right out from under the serged edge if there is any stress at all on the seam, and that in those cases it is a good idea to first stitch the seams with a fairly wide seam allowance. I usually use about a 3/8" seam, or a half inch seam, but in this case it would have been better to do the standard "big 4 style 5/8" and then serge just the edge, that way there wouldn't have been any stress on the fabric, and I would not be continually patching the small places where the seam opens up. Live and learn....

If the fabric was not this wonderful drape-y rayon crepe, in a print that makes me happy every time I look at it, I'd simply sent it to the ragbag, but as it is all those things, I get to practice the somewhat out of fashion techniqe of mending. Today is going to be, if anything, even hotter than yesterday, so I will be staying home and doing as much as possible to make progress on the various projects that yesterday's heat headache made very difficult and slow. Wish me luck!

M3 2013 - day 5 (+ random Sunday snippets)

The forecast today is for hot and sunny (mid 80's, which means closer to 90 here at Acorn Cottage); if this keeps on, the springtime flowers won't stay long. Last night, the pink dogwood down the street just glowed against the evening sky, and a few blocks away, wisteria along the fenceline smells so sweetly that I am transported back in memory to a happier springtime when I was out nightwalking with my beloved G. Still, time passes and life goes on...

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Portrait of our plucky heroine with her fig trees... Today, the weather being not only turrible-hot but windy besides, I am wearing one of my summertime "popover" dresses, the design originally inspired by one of the Japanese patterns by NaniIro, and rather heavily modified by me. Lightweight rayon, all rectangles with some triangular gores along the hemline edge. My summertime 6PAC sewing plan includes four more dresses in this style. This particular one needed some leafy embroidery on the front to cover up the spots where I spilled tea down it one time, and make them look intentional!

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Claire asked about the earrings I was wearing yesterday. While in yesterday's photo it looks a bit like they are a confection of large dangling coin pearls, they are actually something more whimsical and prosaic, being what I call notional haberdashery; the earrings are made from sewing notions, and were originally made to coordinate with my button crown.

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Started cutting another stencil, to do some embellishment on a summertime tee shirt. I was rather taken by this post on the Alabama Chanin journal; they did an entire week inspired by Marimekko. I decided to use one of the designs "Magdalena" that you can download as pdf files, and resized it to fit on an 11x17 sheet of paper. This time I decided to try using a piece of heavy mylar sold for making quilting templates... not anywhere near as easy to cut as the lighter mylar from the art supply store, but that only comes in 6" widths and I wanted something larger. My arm is a bit sore from the amount of cutting already (three days of small spare moments), and it is only halfway done. It will be curious to see how it works as a stencil. I'd also like to try out what some of the folks on SG are doing and simply have my design printed out and then laminated, and cut the lamination plastic for the stencil. Future experimentation is in order...

M3 2013 - day 4

Chore day today, and our plucky heroine will start with a bike ride to the recycling center, to drop off several bags full of paper... The idea is to get as much of the outside-of-house tasks done early in the day, so this transplanted but overly adapted denizen of the NorthWet can hide in the shade for the worst of the hot-n-sunny... This morning's Me Made clothing are both from the dusk side of my current SWAP; the denim pinafore (here standing in for a skirt) and my "Bang said Max!" indigo tee shirt

M3 2013 - day 3

It was cool enough in the morning that I decided to wear my newly completed brown dog dress; I got several compliments from strangers while out doing errands before the day really heated up. My brown sunhat, and a very lightweight strand of felted wool beads, strung with taupe rocaille glass coordinated well.

The weekend forecast is for well over 80F. I intend to hide indoors, be productive, and work on sewing and studio projects that will generate income. My personal summertime 6PAC sewing plans (currently on hiatus) include a quartet of light rayon summer dresses, but fortunately I have several lightweight, me-made, summer dresses from the last few years; I'd not expected to need them till maybe late June.

M3 2013 - days one and two

Yesterday I had other things on my mind than documenting my MeMadeMay wardrobe choices...So by the time I remembered, it was really too dark to take pictures on the porch. Today I tried out the tripod that I acquired at a yard sale several years ago. It certainly helps in that it is possible to stand somewhere other than at the side of my front door; the side of the house is a somewhat less distracting background.

So, day one I wore a rayon knit twist-front top, under my grey chambray pinafore. Since yesterday included mowing the lawn and other messy chores, older clothes were the choice.

The top was new-made in 2010, and now is rather shabby and worn (rayon knits feel lovely, but do not wear well, in that they get unpleasantly pilly rather quickly) The twist-front design turned out to be a style that I am not really fond of, so this top will not be replaced.

The chambray pinafore is also three years old, though not quite as worn out. There was not quite enough fabric initially, so the pockets ended up being rather scant. In general, pockets large enough to hold my planner are a necessity, so this pinafore stays in the closet more than it gets worn. I have been thinking about how to retrofit larger pockets, since there is no more of the grey chambray, and large contrast pocketing at tummy level is not attractive.

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Day two... The temperature is rising rapidly here, forecast to be in the mid 80's by the weekend. Today my clothing is a mixture of new new and quite old. 

The new denim pinafore not only has large pockets in the skirt, but also has a substantial pocket in the bib front, which is ideal for things like tucking in an index card with the bus routes noted, or keeping a few bits of embroidery floss close by for transit handwork.

The Hawaiian shirt was made in 2005! for the first SWAP that I participate in. Obviously, not all rayon wears poorly. This is a sort of crepe weave, and looks as nice as when it was new, save for being a bit faded.

Sunshiney days require a sunhat, at least as far as our plucky heroine is concerned. The denim sunhat was also made three years ago, and is worn often during the non-rainy months. The various decorations on the hatband are all brooches that I have made at various times - felt roses, knitted and felted flowers, and the embroidered bird once on a pinafore front and salvaged when that wore out and turned into a brooch

M3 2013...why not?

It's almost that time of year again... time for Zoe's MeMadeMay. For obvious reasons this was a no-go last year, but it has been a lot of fun when I did it in the past (MeMadeMay 2010, SelfStitchedSeptember 2010, and MeMadeMarch 2011). Since pledging to wear a me-made garment each day is pretty easy for me, I am going to pledge to get better at learning to take pictures of me wearing my clothing, I think that I remember seeing a tripod somewhere in one of the closets here, which might let me take pictures somewhere other than on the front porch...

Watching the slideshows of the former "Me-Made" challenges, it is obvious to me that the reason that my everyday wardrobe is looking rather tatty around the edges is that a lot of those clothes are two or three years old, and being in heavy rotation due to having in intensive rather than extensive wardrobe. Making up some new clothes is not just a fun idea, but it is needful. I don't have a closet full of more clothing than I use, but have yet to find a good idea of the timing for replacement sitchery. In long past years I would stitch up four or five new dresses a year, to wear as festival clothes to the Oregon Country Fair, Then that year after Fair, those would become my "better" clothes, and the ones from the previous year would get moved to the "work" clothing category, and anything left after two years would become "grubby" gear...

I actually like to have a basic set of eight clothes* rather than five, so that it is theoretically possible to go for a week without needing to do laundry! The clothes closet has never yet made it that far, but it is a goal... that combined with a pair or two of overalls, a pair or two of loose pants, and an assortment of outerwear and underwear, makes a very tidy, unextravagent wardrobe. Rather like the "Not So Big House" movement, where a smaller house allows for a greater quality of materials and density of design, my Not So Big wardrobe allows me to pay a great deal of attention to the various components.

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8 pinafores
8 underdresses
8 knit tops
8 tee shirts
8 summer dresses

M3 sewing (planning for action) + media

I am going to spend the month of May wearing clothing made by me, excepting for shoes, and raingear. The idea of MeMadeMay (hereafter referred to as M3) has motivated me to get back to my sewing. My lost mojo, which ran away when it looked in the mirror, might be tempted to return.

I tend to be both very pragmatic and very quirky about clothing; it has to be comfortable, and practical, and my "style" is somewhere in the neighborhood of urban fairytale, probably on the borderland. My standard three season "uniform" is a jumper with shirt and leggings, with extra layers when it is really cold. Some of the time I wear an apron/pinafore over everything

Even if I don't make any new jumpers or dresses, I've five, enough to get by, though some are worn to a ravelling, and will be replaced as I finish up SWAP. I've a few homemade blouses and shirts, but mostly I've been wearing black knit tops from Goodwill under my jumpers, so that is one area that could be improved... I have plenty of underthings and one pair of velour leggings. Now that I've a serger, I can quickly make up several more pair of leggings if the weather remains cold

While I did learn how to knit socks, my knitting is relatively slow, I don't enjoy working at a gauge tiny enough to make comfortable durable socks, and so I've decided to make up some cloth hose. I've already made some for my SCA gear, so I know that they are actually comfortable, and being cut on the bias, they aren't terribly baggy odd looking. I might try making some in Polartec, for wearing when it is cold and rainy. Even so, it will take a while to make up several pair, I'd like to have about five to seven, enough for a week.

I'd like to also make a raincoat. I have a pattern I like, and yards of well aged London Fog fabric (black of course) in my stash cupboard that I've been carrying around ever since I lived in Seattle.

(it occurs to me that I should mention that while it looks like I am doing a fairly extreme version of M3, in fact I already sew most of my own clothing and underthings. For me the challenge is to find the gaps in my everyday wardrobe, like socks, and T shirts, and a raincoat, and maybe a bathrobe...)

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