June: Project Sew My Style

I’ve had this garment of the year long #sewmystyle project done for over a month. I mistakenly made it last month thinking it was May’s project but that was the doomed Pocket Skirt by CaliFaye. This month’s make is way better! It’s the Briar Sweater & Tee by Megan Nielsen. You may have seen that I wore this shirt twice during #mmm17. It’s pretty awesome!

I bought an fantastic rayon knit from Girl Charlee. It’s two shades of blue; electric and navy. It’s soft and really light. Perfect for a summer tee. I chose the full length shirt over the cropped version. As I’ve said many times before, I’m not a cropped kind of girl but I was concerned about the length on the tail of the full length version. I like a good butt flap but an extreme tail might not be cute.

The shirt is super fast and easy. Fast to cut out and just as fast to stitch. All done in one sitting. I normally don’t do that. I have to think different aspects through before I continue on.  Nothing to think through. It’s a t-shirt! Front, back and sleeves. Simplicity at its finest. Check out that stripe matching!

I did have a mishap. I snipped the sleeve! I was trimming out extra fabric on the sleeve hem. The fabric is so light that I didn’t realize I had more than a single layer and SNIP! Crap! I tried to fix it by sewing the little flap I had dangling to cover the hole. Kind of healing itself. That did not wash well at all. I used a bit of cotton fabric the same navy color and put behind the hole and stitched around it. I think this will work so much better.
Nothing else to really say about this one. I enjoy wearing it. The butt flap is a little much. It gets caught on my booty. I would like to try out the cropped version in a sweater. It would look cute for layering.That’s all folks!  Have you made the Briar tee? What are your thoughts?

From Old to New

While visiting my parents, my mom decided to dig out an old dress and force it upon me. “Here make something with it!” Ya know, because I make magic from old ugly things.  I did not take a picture of the dress before I started hacking it apart. I even told myself to do so.  I was watching tv and thought I could rip it apart while I sat.  Picture be damned! The dress was a long sheath dress with a slit on each side.  Nothing exciting.

I knew I had enough fabric for a shirt and possibly a skirt or something else. Hmm… I started with the shirt. I wanted to make a peplum top.  I fished out my pattern Simplicity 1425. I made this shirt before and it wasn’t too bad of a sew.  The dress already had the proper neckline and it was sleeveless so I really only needed to worry about the princess seams in the front, darts in the back and the peplum. Talk about a lazy sew.

Sorry for the deodorant mark! lol I’ve worn it already to work and we haven’t made it to wash day yet. 🙂

I laid out the pattern on the top and realized that the pattern wasn’t going to work because the fabric wasn’t wide enough so I decided to wing it! I put the top on and starting pinning it on myself. I picked where the princess seams should sit and pinned the line on one side. I cut along the pins and left a 1/4 seam allowance. (well I tried. It was definitely not that big) I took that line and mirrored it on the other side by folding the piece in half and marking the cut in chalk.

I was able to follow the pattern for the length, darts in the back and the peplum.  I did have to cut the peplum short in width because I wanted to conserve as much fabric as I could.

I made sure when I was sewing it back together, that I unpicked the hemmed edges.  I could have sewed it up without doing so but it would have left funny lumps at the joins.  Taking a few extra minutes to unpick is so worth it! Instead of the pleats on the peplum, I gathered the piece to fit the width of the top.

I was super worried about how to do the closure in the back.  I had a plan of adding an extra piece down the middle and sew it closed to about the waist and do some snaps to finish out the length. It was going to look like the extra piece was hiding buttons or a zipper but when I tried it on with the extra piece, it was too big.  I was able to sew the back closed and I can still slide it on.  The fabric has a bit of stretch that is just enough to shimmy down into place.  Score!

As if a cute top wasn’t enough, I have enough to make a pair of shorts.  Yup, shorts.  Like I mentioned before the fabric has a bit of stretch so why not!  I named them Rose Butt before I even started on them.  Because that’s just what you do.

I used my handy dandy workout capri pattern I’ve used a bunch of times.  They are slip on style and have an elastic waist.  Unfortunately when I made them the legs were a bit too tight.  So tight in fact, my fat started to try to decide above or below the hem.  It was not pleasant.

Tis a bit blurry but you get the idea.

Instead of just canning the whole idea, I decided to revisit the dress’ start.  It had slits.  I can just add slits to the shorts and bam!  No need for my fat to worry about not being with its other friends.

Now I will tell you, this will be the one and only time they are worn together.  That’s so not cool.  I want to make a big, swingy top to go with them.  Tight on the bottom but airy on top.  I prefer this rule in my life.  Never two tight items or too lose.  It just doesn’t work for me.  I feel like I’m sharing a lot… too much? Oh well.

I didn’t want to wait until I decided what the top should look like before sharing the shorts so I did pair it with my Blackout Sorbetto for another look.  Two for one special!  Out with the old and in with the (two) new.

Me-Made-May 2017 Finale

Time to finish out Me-Made-May. It’s gone really well! I’m so much happier not taking photos in the morning and trying to find a photo where I’m not making a weird face. Fast and quick mmm17 shots peeps. Totally the way to go.

Day Sixteen & Seventeen:

• B5526 Shirtdress
• Butterfly Simplicity 1364 top and RTW pants

Day Eighteen & Nineteen:

• B5526 black shirt, RTW speckled pants
• Nerdy Colette Sorbetto, Jamie Jeans by Named Patterns

Day Twenty & Twenty-One:

• Simone by Victory Patterns <– love this dress
• Tie-dye maxi refashioned from a bunch of tie-dye shirts

Day Twenty-Two & Twenty-Three:

• Colette Sorbetto in ITY Knit, RTW Sweater and Jeans
• Simplicity 1364 blue sweater, B5613 geometric skirt (wish I had more of that fabric)

Day Twenty-Four & Twenty-Five:

• Blackout Colette Sorbetto, Refashioned maxi dress to skirt
• Animal print Simone by Victory Patterns

Day Twenty-Six & Twenty-Seven:

• B5526 Blurple Shirt & RTW jeans
• Franken-style Simplicity 1692  (BTW this starts the moment that I only took pics of my handmade items. I swore I wore pants in the rest of these)

Day Twenty-Eight & Twenty-Nine:

• B5526 Blue “Bob Ross” shirt
• Simplicity 1692 Granny Chic shirt

Day Thirty & Thirty-One:

• Toaster Sweater with 3/4 sleeves
• Briar Tee by Megan Nielsen. This one is actually for Project: Sew My Style so you’ll see a full post for it later this month

Entire Month in a Teeny Picture!

Reflection:

This was the best Me-Made-May! I didn’t feel panicked on what to wear every morning. Most days are me-made anymore so it didn’t seem like a strenuous activity.  Part of my “cool” attitude is the amount of clothes I’ve made over the past year. They’re all clothes I like to wear. I don’t feel “eh, whatevs, that’ll do” about them.

When I was first learning how to sew, I felt the need to produce quantity not quality. I think mostly I was trying to understand the whole clothes making process and understanding these crazy foreign words in the instructions of patterns. All in all ,I feel that I’m getting better at picking patterns that fit my style and personality. I’m learning how to make clothes fit properly and that I feel good in.

I’m happily making my way to my wardrobe being entirely me-made. I think this MMM17 really made that apparent  Woo-hoo! *happy dance* Did you participate in Me-Made-May? Do you plan on it in the future? What’s your favorite part of the process?

 

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

If you follow my Instagram (@Jamie_L_Mac), you’ve known I’ve been up to something that includes a lot of denim.  Well two weeks in the making, you finally get to see the results of the painstaking hours I put into my newest bag.

First, let me share my inspiration, from Pinterest of course.

This beauty caught my eye.  I was looking for what to do with old jeans.  I had a ton.  I love the idea of creating a pattern and covering a chair.  A chair I do not have or need.  So I saved this and figured it would never be more than something for me to ogle.

I don’t know about you but my brain likes to let things roll around in there for a while.  I take in a lot of info but nothing becomes apparent right away until…

Inspiration two:

Now this guy has a “pattern“.  Meaning it kind of gives you the proper dimensions and what not to make it but you’re still kind of on your own.  But that’s okay because that’s usually how my bags go.

I really needed a larger tote for all my crap for work. My purse, lunch bag, extra pair of shoes (when I wear heels),  sweater (because its always freezing) laptop, charger, and other random things you can find in the bottom of my bag, all needed some breathing room.  Usually I come to work with a bag that is overflowing with my necessities.  None of these items can stay at work so hence the to and fro truckage.

Needless to say this bag is HUGE and I was excited!  I could fit all of my cats in there and still have room for a unicorn. Mary Poppins ain’t got shit on me! I can’t really give a lot of instruction on how I put the whole thing together because it was, “well this looks right” and then SEW!

I wanted that nice flat bottom you see in the inspo pic. I found a really heavy interfacing. I even reinforced that interfacing with more of the super heavy interfacing.

I cut all the denim in long lengths but all 2 1/2″ wide strips. I was using a 1/4″ seam allowance so this would leave me with 2″ wide strips when sewn.  I didn’t top stitch any of them.  I toyed with the idea for only a second and realized how much more time that would be. I ended up ironing the crap out of each vertical set before sewing them to the neighboring strips and ironing again.

Added the pocket to the front.  I debated if I wanted a plain pocket or if it should match the rest.  Obviously from the previous pic, I went with matching. If I was really crazy, I would have cut the strips to match what was going to be underneath and the pocket would have blended. I did however cut a pink lining and added a magnetic snap.

On the struts, I added the same pleather that was on the bottom of the bag.  It seemed weird to not include it other places.  I even went a little wild and added a decorative stitch on them…and then to the bottom… and lastly on the top… I can’t help myself sometimes.

Speaking of the top. This bag was supposed to be about 3″ taller.  There was no way I needed it to be so big.  I hacked off the top but kept it just in case. Lucky that I did because I decided it would be great way to finish on the zipper area.  Granted it wasn’t wide enough because the bag is 8″ deep.  I added some plain strips on the sides to make it work. I did add more pleather at this point too to cover the raw edges of the pieces matching up.  My sewing machine was working overtime and there were some spots that needed some hand cranking to get through. Bought that long zip for $.75. Such a deal!

Since I went with the pink lining on the pocket, I decided the whole thing needs a pink lining. Check out my helpers doing their thing.

I didn’t do anything fancy on the inside.  Just replicated the outside of the bag.  No extra pockets or fun.  I didn’t have enough fabric after I cut what I needed for any extras. 😦 I wanted to have a separate compartment for my laptop but oh well.

The handles are a mix of denim and pleather.  I made the pleather pieces wider than the “pattern” called for.  I think I actually doubled the width.  I did omit the long shoulder strap.  There was no need for that.  I can’t fathom trying to swing this big boy across my body.

Here’s the big beast in all his glory.  I’m pretty tickled with how it turned out.  It took so much time and I really had to push through.  Being so time consuming really, put me off but I’m so happy I prevailed. Final dimensions: 16″ height, 17.5″ width, and 8″ deep.

The back is just as awesome as the front. I didn’t mean to spend my Me-Made-May on such a large project but inspiration hit and I couldn’t say no.  How did you spend your Me-Made-May? Any special projects? Completed? In the works?