Me Made May '13: Days 6 - 10

Hello all, more outfits for you today. Thanks so much for the lovely comments on the first 5 days outfits!

So here we go...








Day 6
What: Smooth Sailing Shorts, with hand painted striped vest.
Where: At home and popping to the shops
Doing: BBQ with the family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 7

What: Got Your Measure Cambie Dress

Where:School

Doing:Teaching all day, including measuring in numeracy, hence the choice of dress!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 8
What: Chicago Tribune 1950s mail order dress.
Where: Work
Doing: Teaching all day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 9

What: Colette Patterns Meringue skirt.

Where: Work, then the pup

Doing: Teaching all day then pub quiz in the evening.

Day 10
What: Colette Patterns Peony Dress
Where: Work
Doing: Teaching all day

Me Made May '13. Days 1 - 5

Day 1: 
What: Swing Dress.
Where: To work
Doing: Teaching all day, followed by a pub quiz in the evening.

Day 2:

What: Pink Sorbetto with chinos 

Where: Work

Doing: Teaching all day.

Day 3: 

What: Grainline tiny pocket tank, with  chinos

Where: Work

Doing: Teaching all day, followed by  the pub for a meal and drinks with friends.   

Day 4:

What: Refashioned Ginger Skirt with pink vest and cardi.

Where: Home.

Doing: Out and about running errands.

Day 5:

What: Grey linen Simplicity 2451 skirt with red Sorbetto.

Where: Home and in town.

Doing: Lesson planning and out shopping with the hubby.

Finished Project: Swing Dress Pattern

So, it's about time I got round to posting about the finished makes I've had waiting to be blogged about for the last few months!

First up is the Sense and Sensibility Patterns Swing Dress (aka Casey's Swing Dress Sew-along pattern). I bought this pattern back when Casey first mentioned doing a sew-along, and then wasn't able to take part so it got shoved in my pattern stash and forgotten about until Christmas. I can't remember what size I sewed up in the end, but I had to take out some of the ease just under the bust as it was really baggy and some of the ease on the back too, when I sewed up my muslin. This seems to have worked well though and I really like the fit of it now. I also added about 2" length onto the skirt to make sure it was long enough.

 

Generally this was a pretty simple make, except for the collar and collar facing. The instructions with the pattern totally foxed me but thankfully I had all of Casey's sew-along posts printed off and saved so when it came to sewing them, I had no problems in the end because Casey's instructions are pure genius!

I bought the fabric for this dress over Christmas - it's a viscose cotton mix and has a lovely drape, but that meant it could be a bit of a bugger to sew at times! Anyhoo, I managed it, and it's nice to finally sew with something other than cotton.

I decided to line the skirt because the fabric is quite lightweight and a bit sheer in bright sunlight. I used some china silk lining I had left over from one of my first sewing makes and hemmed it with some bias binding I had lying around. Not exactly the best colour combo, but I was determined to finish this in time to take away on my mini-moon to Edinburgh at the start of April and didn't have chance to go out and get any other colour.

I added some really pretty yellow purl buttons to the neckline, which I bought when I went to the NEC with Kat the other month. I knew they'd be perfect for the dress as there are small yellow flowers in the fabric pattern.

I serged all the edges - not very vintage I know, but I wanted to make sure the raw edges were all encased as the fabric frayed quite a lot.

I'm really glad I've finally got round to making this pattern as it's such a lovely dress to wear. I've worn it loads since making it so will definitely be making another one at some point - maybe in a nice solid colour for something a little different.

Giveaway Winner

Hello all,

It's a little late - things have been manic round here and I haven't had the time to pick a winner and post about it till now.

But, without further ado - the winner is Vicki Kate, so congratulations! Could you message me / leave a comment with your email address so I can get in touch for your postal details please?

Can't wait to see what you make with the patter and fabric Vicki Kate!

Belated Blogiversary Giveaway

Hello all,

Well I'm back from getting married and a minimoon to Edinburgh and have realised that I missed by blogiversary.... which just so happens to be the same day as my wedding day so hopefully I won't be forgetting it quite so easily next year! lol

Anyway, I have been lucky enough to win my fair share of give-aways since I started blogging, so I thought it was only fair to give something back to this lovely community that we're all part of!

Without further ado, I shall get on with it. Up for grabs is this cotton fabric - there's about 2.5m if I remember correctly. Can't currently find my tape measure to check though. And also Simplicity 2444 - I got this one free with Sew magazine recently, but I already have this pattern so thought it would be better going to a new home.

All you have to do to win is leave a comment below before midnight (GMT) on 24th April and I'll pick a winner from the hat. I'm happy to post anywhere in the world. Make sure you leave a link to your blog or an email address so I can email you for your address should you win.

In other news, I have, *cough* been somewhat unrestrained with my fabric purchases recently...

The two in the top left came from Edinburgh Fabrics (Thanks for the recommendation Debi). They're both really lovely stable knit fabrics, one cream, one a lovely petrol blue. I'm planning on making Gertie's bow tie blouse with the cream knit and a pencil skirt with the petrol blue knit.The next two on the top were finds in a vintage shop in Edinburgh. The clothes in there were really over-priced for the condition they were in I thought, but these two lots of fabrics were a bargain at £4 each for about 2m of each. The houndstooth fabric is a nice light wool, whilst the polkadot fabric is a gorgeous soft cotton.

In the middle is my one and only purchase from the home sewing exhibition I went to at the NEC with Kat a few weeks ago - I LOVE this fabric, it has geisha girls and skulls on it! Think I'm going to make a pencil dress of some sort with it. Then the last three fabrics in this row are all from Fabric.com . The red is a nice drapey rayon fabric, the golden fabric was a bonus piece they included - there's only about 1m of it and no idea what to do with it, then the green is a really lovely cotton.

On the bottom, the mint broderie-anglais is another purchase from Edinburgh Fabrics - I bought enough to make a nice full-skirted sun-dress  then the green is a double-knit also from fabric.com. I'm planning on making a skirt out of this too.

So just a few purchases then! Whoops.

Good luck with the give-away!

Me Made May 13

I'm in!

I had so much fun doing this last year that there was no question over signing up again this year. Last year really made me think about how I paired up my me made clothes to get different looks and although, this year, I have a few more items of me made clothes to wear than I did last year it'll still be a challenge to make the outfits look different every day.

I also found some of my now favourite blogs through the flickr group which is an added bonus.

So, without further ado:

I Helen of Helen Made, sign up to take part in MMM '13. I will wear at least one me made item of clothing a day and endeavour to avoid any outfit repeats throughout the month.

I will blog every 3 or 4 days with my outfits, but post in the flickr group daily or every other day depending on what works best. So there it is. Here's to a great MMM!

Still Here!

I am still here and have even managed to finish two sewing projects since finishing for Easter last week, but we're in the final count down to our wedding on Saturday so there's been little time to get photos of the finished items!

I've finally got round to sewing up the Sense and Sensibility Swing Dress Pattern that Casey held a sew-along for about 2 years ago - which is when I bought the pattern! Oops. It's actually a lot more straight forward to sew up than I thought it would be especially when I read the instructions for joining together the front and back at the shoulders! They made no sense whatsoever to me, but thankfully I had Casey's tutorial on hand to help. I'm taking the dress away with my on our mini-moon to Edinburgh next week so hopefully I'll manage to get some pictures of it then, so I can properly blog about the dress.

I've also made the pencil skirt from Gertie's book - so simple to make - I had it started and finished in a day which is kind of rewarding. I've got plans to make another in a green double-knit so we shall see how that goes. But it went together like a dream, so there will definitely be more of them coming along!

In addition to that, I have a yet to blog about wedding related clothing item that I actually finished back in January, but I'll post about that once the wedding is done with.

So there is some sewing going on, it's just a little hectic round here at the moment! Hopefully I'll be back in just over a week with some photos of all the finished makes to blog about in detail. But until then, enjoy the sunshine - I've got my fingers crossed it stays like this till Sunday!