Me Made May '15 Round Up

I'm a bit late with my round up - I blame the children for getting ill after the half term holidays had finished!

This was my first time joining in with Me Made May. I haven't got the biggest handmade wardrobe, hence my pledge:

'I, Amy, of sewnintheattic.blogspot.co.uk, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '15. I endeavour to wear two garments made, adjusted or refashioned by me each week for the duration of May 2015.'

I really enjoyed the month. I got to wear all my casual makes and a few of the RTW items that I had adjusted/altered to fit me. I did find it a challenge, but I met my pledge  - phew! Here are some of the photo's:

Top row from left to right - RTW altered top (elasticated hem which I chopped off and re-hemmed, taking in the sides too and RTW skirt which I took in on the waist; Blue modified Simplicity 1620 top; RTW altered top (as 1st photo).
Middle row - RTW top with elasticated waist which I chopped and hemmed with lace; Zigzag Colette Moneta dress; Floral Simplicity 1717 A-line skirt.
Bottom row - Blue Colette Moneta dress; Stripy Maria Denmark Kirsten Kimono Tee; Blue modified Simplicity 1620 top.

The only part of the month that I'm a bit disappointed by is the record of it all. It was quite a busy month for me at home and I probably should have taken more pics of me and posted to instagram. But I didn't, so there we are! So some of the repeats of garments, and a few other RTW items which I have altered I haven't got a record of, so you'll just have to take my word for it! Currently I'm managing a blog post every 3+ weeks, which is not really where I want to be as I have quite a few unblogged garments queuing up. I also like to gather my thoughts before I write too, so I don't know how some of you bloggers manage to be so instant, I'd like to be like that too! Last week the kids were home with me and we enjoyed the half term holidays with little day trips and activities. One highlight was St. Lawrence's Wood, at Hartshill Hayes Country Park in Nuneaton - the bluebells were out, the sun was shining and the kids were little angels!

St. Lawrence's Wood at Hartshill Hayes Country Park

Another highlight was visiting to the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry to look at the Story of Children's TV. My two boys were probably a bit young for it (3yo), but slightly older children would love it, especially if you all go with a grandparent too, as we did; there was much reminiscing about shows like Andy Pandy, Thunderbirds, Sooty and Sweep, Blue Peter, Play School...I wish I'd had a bit more time to explore, but the boys like to whiz round at the moment!  

On the left - a couple of photos from the Children's TV exhibition.  I loved Play School - used to watch with my mum and we always had a cup of hot chocolate!
On the right - One of the Shaun sculptures from London - my two don't do posing for photos!

Finally, at the end of half term, we spent some quality time visiting family in London. We planned a 'three's and under' sightseeing trip round London - a first for our kids, but not their cousins. On Saturday we took overground and underground trains from Woodford to Tower Bridge and walked over the bridge and past HMS Belfast (which we will definitely visit when the boys are a bit older). We found a couple of Shaun the Sheep sculptures along and over the Thames too. Then we hopped on a river bus and cruised up the Thames to Westminster Bridge. A spot more sightseeing - taking in Big Ben, Parliament Square and Westminster Abbey. With four children three and under this was quite an undertaking! We finally headed back to my sister-in-laws for a well deserved BBQ and a glass of fizz!

On the Sunday we went to the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. If you like Dolls Houses, they have a fantastic collection, along with many childhood toys and I did find a few sewing related items too! The museum is, of course free, and it's well worth a visit if you're in the area and have young kids as they have free activities including an indoor sandpit! 

Excuse the terrible photo's! The quote on the left says it all really!

The kids also started to get ill over the weekend and I had a child at home for the first three days back after the holidays, so I'm a bit behind with cleaning duties (haha, when am I not behind on this kind of stuff!)! But I did make a few things in May - Zigzag Moneta and a stripy Kirsten Kimono Tee. SOOO loving that Tee pattern. I also treated myself to an overlocker (serger). Which helped with the speed of these makes! I've just taken pictures of them for the blog - I'm trying to be a more organised blogger! I might get round to writing up the Spring for Cotton post one day too!

Ok, back to MMM stuff. I did find the month challenging because I don't have that many makes, and a couple of items I've recently spent making were more occasional wear. And even though it was my husbands birthday at the start of the May and then my brother's, there were no fancy dinners outs, just evenings in with friends and family, so nothing I dressed up for. Maybe this month I will get to wear them more. Although as I type, the summer has kicked in and so now I feel like I need to make a summer dress/ skirt/ top and my wintry makes might be redundant until October!

It's been fun seeing all the photos and reading many of your round ups about Me Made May and I already know that I will be taking part next year AND making more of an effort to document and record it.

If you have any suggestions for summer top patterns please send them my way!

Spring for Cotton and Me Made May '15

Hello! It's very nearly May, so it seems like the time has flown by since I came across the Spring for Cotton sew along hosted by Rochelle from Lucky Lucille at the beginning of April!

Image from Rochelle at LuckyLucille.com

I wanted to join in and had recently purchased a beautiful cotton lawn that fit the bill of 100% cotton. I just needed to find a vintage pattern and I could play too! Could I find one in my size?! that I liked?! and would arrive in time to make it?! No! So my back up plan came into play. I ordered the 1940's Tea Dress by Sew Over It. Me and my lovely sister, Sarah, (who could be tempted to start sewing, she has my mums old singer machine, but hasn't ever used it) had been eyeing up 1940's dress patterns (vintage and inspired) for a while. Ideally we were looking for one with a sweetheart neckline, and maybe a gathered shoulder yoke, but I'm thinking maybe of adapting the Sew Over It pattern if we can't find something similar (maybe, when I'm a bit more confident!). Anyway, I thought it would be a great dress for the Spring for Cotton sew along as vintage inspired patterns are also permitted.

Fabric is a cotton lawn

Image from sewoverit.com - 1940s Tea Dress by Sew Over It

I'm pleased with my progress so far, I've had to lower the bust panels by over an inch, make a forward shoulder adjustment and basically redraw all the pattern pieces for the front bodice. I only started last week, and I'm totally loving the challenge and the pattern itself. I've adapted the sleeve pattern too, so hoping they turn out as cap sleeves once I attach them! Then there's the invisible zip, neckline facing and hemming to do....before tomorrow's deadline! It's totally doable in one evening right?! Nothing like leaving it to the last minute!

Just sleeves, neck facing, zip, hem and buttons to complete!

And finally, in this short blog post...

I'm also signing up for Me Made May 2015, along with many, many others in the sewing community. This is run by Zoe of 'So, Zo...What do you know?', if you didn't know. And you can sign up here, there's still a little bit of time to do so! Here is my pledge:

'I, Amy, of sewnintheattic.blogspot.co.uk, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '15. I endeavour to wear two garments made, adjusted or refashioned by me each week for the duration of May 2015.'

I shall post my outfits on Instagram when I'm wearing them, So follow me on there to see them (link on the sidebar)!

Will you be joining in with Me Made May'15?

Dahlia

Colette Patterns - Dahlia dress

Hello! It's Easter and I'm looking forward to eating lots of chocolate and relaxing with my family. I already know there won't be any sewing time as we're away visiting family most of the time - it's ok though, I've come to terms with it!. Today I bring you Dahlia...It's taken me a long, long time to make. But today I finally took the photos of the finished dress (some of them outside in the sun!) and this is what I have to say...

Boots are from Red or Dead btw

When Colette Patterns announced the Dahlia dress I immediately loved it. I hesitated buying it though, because it looked a bit more advanced than the beginner I am. In the end I caved - it does say beginner on the packet after all!

I was so excited when the pattern arriving and being able to follow with the Dahlia Sewalong too. But it'd kind of slipped my mind that we were about to redecorate our bedroom and we'd be going away for a week (this is before Christmas!) and I'd got some Christmas sewing to do, so I wouldn't have much spare time for selfish sewing!  I made a muslin - first a size 12, then re-cutting my second at a 10. This size seemed ok, fitting nicely around the bust and waist. The shoulders and neckline on the other-hand were a bit of a gaping disaster! I know that I'm not alone with this problem, but at the time there weren't that many reviews around. I hadn't anticipated so many problems with the fit, and being a bit of a perfectionist and a beginner meant that sorting this took a bit longer than I thought it would.

I wanted to get the fit right on the paper pattern, rather than tweaking the fit on the final dress. So to cut a long story short, I made five muslins, with various alterations - some worked, others didn't. Those that worked were:

• A dart in the back bodice, an inch wide from the neckline tapering to nothing (also redrawing the original back bodice waist darts so they follow the grain). This suggestion was made by Devon Iott, host of the Dahlia Sewalong. This prompted me to check out her Miss Make blog post about the Dahlia pattern. It does have some useful pointers, so check it out if you plan to make this pattern.
• Redrawing the pattern pieces for the sleeve and front bodice to incorporate a reduced neckline (also suggested by Devon on her blog). 
• Redrawing the sleeve pattern piece to accommodate my square shoulders (which also helped to reduce the gaping for me). I did this by adding width across the sleeve at the apex of the shoulder (if that's even the right term!) - cutting and spreading the pattern, filling with tissue and taping back together.
• I took in the sleeves too, as the muslin sleeves were huge.  

I also referred to the Palmer/Pletsch book Fit for Real People book quite a bit. I cobbled together my square shoulder adjustment for raglan sleeves by using a combination of methods for other sleeves (including other types of raglan sleeves where there is a neck dart, and where the sleeve pattern piece is in two pieces) as the suggestion in the book was that there wouldn't be a need for this type of adjustment with this sleeve (but maybe they had a stretchy knit fabric in mind???).

I have to say that at many points during the muslin fitting stage of this process I wanted to give up! I'm pleased I didn't, as I think the neckline fits really well now and I do really like my new dress.

The first muslin - neck line gaping.

Excuse the cheesy grin, I think the sun is a bit bright! 

The fabric is a lovely drapey rayon from John Lewis. I couldn't find it again when I went in the Leicester store recently, but I did see it on the Sewoverit website. I'm a bit of a blue addict. Most of my ready to wear dresses are blue and I've noticed this trend with fabric buying...going to have to watch myself and try to buy other colours!

I loved making the dress up. The fabric was great to work with. Not as hard to work with as I had first imagined being a crepe.  The neckline and sleeves are finished with bias binding. It's not so easy to make bias binding with this fabric, although it all looks fine after being sewn together. I just find the process (making and then using) a bit fiddly! More practice required I think.

Sleeve detail

Neckline detail

The actual making of the dress was fairly straight forward and I thought the Sewalong instructions, combined with the booklet were detailed enough for a beginner. the invisible zip was the only technique I really needed more help with than the booklet offered, but the sewalong was very detailed. It's great that the indie companies offer sewalongs. I do think I probably would have looked up more techniques on the interweb had this not have been offered.

Can you see the zip?! I thought I did pretty well, almost got everything matching at the seems.

I am particularly proud of the invisible zip - not bad for a beginner and I only had to unpick it once when I lost concentration and sewed slightly into the zip!!

My hand sewing is also improving. I've always known how to do it from being taught at a young age - I just haven't had much practise! This article on the Coletterie blog has particularly clear instructions and information about different hemming techniques.

Hand sewn hem

More cheesy grins with the sun in my eyes.

Unfortunately I may have been patient at the fitting stage prior to cutting my fabric, however I should have given more time to the fitting during the sew up of my chosen fabric. I should have tried the dress on more often during the making, basting it together...but I didn't and it was actually a little too big for me. I ended up unpicking the bias binding on the neckline (which I'd hand sewn), gathering up the back bodice a little along the neck and re-sewing. I also confess that I took in the right-hand side seam by half an inch. I was going to take it in on the other side too, but I couldn't bare to unpick my lovely invisible zip! It's probably a cardinal sin in the sewing world - but I don't think it's noticeable, do you?! 

Have you ever done this?

Hope you have lots of eating chocolate planned over the Easter weekend! And lots of sewing too (not jealous, honest!) xx