May is long gone and I still haven’t summed up my Me Made May experience. So lets have a look.

I pledged

To declutter my wardrobe. Which I did.

To wear me made items three times a week. Which I think I mainly did. Sometimes not for the whole day. But you try and live with a little vomitter and don’t get changed 7 times a day.

To create some new me mades. Which I definitely did.

And to make some progress on the perfect breastfeeding top. Which I haven’t really. Except if you are accepting a head full of vague ideas as progress. Oh well, I will just have to continue breastfeeding for a while.

I guess, I did the challenge only half heartedly as I have so many things on my plate these days but it was still a very good and inspiring experience. And I am already looking forward to taking part next year.

I have realised that my wardrobe consists of lots of ill fitting and mismatching items. I still kept those that might fit again one day. Even though it is hard to tell where kilos things will be going.

The mismatching is another problem, probably unsolvable. I have the colour palette of a parrot so it is difficult to match things. I guess i should add some neutral colours to the mix to be able to combine things better. But if you know me, that will be a difficult task. I might just accidentally turn something that started as a navy blue top into a parrot coat again.

I have also realised that I tend to think that me mades are precious and not to be worn at messy times. For the children I might be making casual items but I still have a tiny bit the feeling that they shouldn’t ruin them because mummy made them. So they shouldn’t be wearing them when they play. Or eat. Which is basically what children do. So whilst in my knitting classes I am always preaching of “making and letting go”, I do struggle a tiny bit of following this for my own makes.

For myself it is even worse. I love making dresses. Especially nice dresses. But I am not an everyday dress type of person. I am a jeans and whatever shirt I pulled out of the wardrobe type of person. So I don’t really have occasions to wear nice dresses and if I wear them for the school run I feel uncomfortable and overdressed.

I guess the main lesson learned from Me Made May 16 was to make not only more clothes for myself and the children but to focus on staples and more wearable items. And to take it more seriously in general. The ideal would be to be able to make all the clothes for the family myself, wouldn’t it. Which would also mean to not only look out for those cute and special printed fabrics but some plain colours too. Even I wouldn’t mix a patterned top with a multicoloured even more patterned skirt. I said “wouldn’t” because I have done it in the past. Due to lack of a plain item in the right colour.

Oh, and when I say “all” the clothes, I don’t include things like rain clothes or winter coats,… Not for now at least. But I am actually planning to make trousers. As I am clearly wearing trousers more often than dresses.

One good side effect of that new plan would also be to reduce my stash considerably. It had gone down lately. Until dotsnstripes had a super sale, selling some lovely fabrics for £3 a metre. So I am back to huge piles of fabric. I wish a day had 48 hours.

So this week started pretty well, I cut out a T-Shirt and a dress last weekend and managed to sew both on Monday. Then I thought, I could continue with one piece a day but this was it 🙂 Well, apart from a Pippi Longstocking apron which I will show you in a seperate post.

Both patterns  are from my klimperklein book Naehen mit Jersey Kinderleicht!

For the dress I used some of the fabric that had been in my Advent calendar last december. And what a perfect match for the size I had to use 🙂 (the pattern doesn’t even include seam allowance yet!):

I love it, it is obviously girly but not the usual boring pinkish stuff.

For the pirate shirt I had plenty of fabric because I had bought that fabric for  a onesie which never happened. So for once I actually looked at the position of the pattern when cutting out rather than just squeezing it into a corner of the fabric to have as little waste as possible and so the motives are spread out evenly.

I combined it with palm tree green stripes for the sleeves and orange for the neck and sleeves.

After I had made the sleeve cuffs too tightly, I panicked and the neck binding is now slightly too loose. But I love the combination and have decided to make a similar combo for his brother. I don’t normally like matching children but I guess pirates usually do come in bunches.

Oh, I almost forgot. I also made a pair of shorts out of scraps. The pattern suggested jogging sweat and I had grey or blue. The boy chose blue (believe it or not but I would have preferred the grey) and as I am struggling with plain colours I put lots of other stuff there, like a double layered application. Which is also a good way of using up tiny pieces of scrap 🙂

I am a teeny weeny bit unsure about the material choice. Obviously a certain thickness is needed for robustness. But then it might get quite warm. Which doesn’t make sense for a pair of shorts. Hmm. I might just try the same pattern with a woven fabric. It will be much cooler and we will see how long it will survive. But that will have to wait a little bit as this week it will be my and mini pirate’s turn.