A personal note – taking a little break

Hi everyone. I have been a little quiet on the blog recently and I will likely be a little quiet for a bit longer so I thought that I would write a note about it, so that you don’t think that I’ve just disappeared!

You may have been aware that my husband I have been looking into moving house (to beside the sea – the image above is a photo that I took of the area and treated with the Waterlogue app…so much fun if you haven’t tried it!) and it was all very exciting and we could see the end goal in sight. But on Monday the owners called us and told us they were no longer in a position to sell.

I have taken this news pretty badly and I’m in a bit of a low at the moment. I have come to realise that it was not necessarily loosing that exact house, but more of what it signified to me – I was moving on to the next stage of my life and making plans, and now these plans have started to fall down around me.  It’s more than just the house, there have been other things building recently, and loosing the house was just the straw that broke the camels back!

Anyway, I’m going to take a step back from the blog and from sewing for a little bit – I need to get outside more and get some fresh air (I know that sounds silly, but I do work in an office all day, and then my hobby involves sitting inside in front of  a sewing machine!). I feel bad for announcing that news, especially since I’ve recently seen a few new people following me on Bloglovin’, which I was really so happy about!

So there you go. Hopefully I’ll be back with a fun sewing project to share soon and I’ll of course still be reading, commenting on and enjoying all of your blogs in the mean time.

Talk soon guys :)

Me Made May 2014 – DONE!

Gosh, didn’t May go by in a flash?! As you probably know, I decided to join the hundreds of other sewists in the annual Me-Made-May challenge this year, with the hopes of wearing at least one Me-Made item every day during the month of May. I did give this challenge a go back in 2010 (when it was actually held in September, rather than May) but only made it to week 2. So I was a bit nervous about taking up the challenge again, but was hoping that the sewing I had done since 2010 and 2014 would be able to see me through the month. You can find details on each of my weeks here:

Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5

So how did I find it? Surprisingly easy really! And to be honest, it was quite an eye-opener for me. I have to admit that I really didn’t wear my me-made clothes very often before MMM and I think one of the reasons for that was because I just had the general feeling that I didn’t have many things that were suitable for day-to-day wearing. Well MMM certainly changed that perception for me!

When the month first started I was worried about having to wear ‘repeats’ – and I saw this cropping up a lot on Instagram or other blogs. And then I realised, why am I worried about wearing the same outfit twice in one month, I do it ALL the time when I’m not doing the challenge, why should it be any different this month?! My personal challenge was simply to wear my handmade clothes, not to wear a different item for each day during the month of May (that would be a whole OTHER challenge!). So once I got over that hurdle, things got a lot easier. Saying that, I don’t think I did actually repeat identical outfits and was able to re-mix garments to get slightly different looks. I think that was the most fun. It made me realise that my clothes have a lot more potential than I thought (for example my foray into pattern matching on Day 16 ending up being perhaps my favourite look of the month!).

Other things that I learnt during the month:

• Some items were my MMM saviours, namely my Jenny skirt, cowl tops and Plantains. I will be making MANY more of these I think!
• Opaque tights make short(er) skirts OK for the office
• The Jenny skirt gives you killer curves!
• I’m not as fat as I thought I was (sorry, not being needy, just stating a fact!)
• The Washi dress doesn’t actually make me look pregnant
• I need more work skirts (I’m on the case)
• I need more casual clothes
• I am obviously drawn towards pink and purple based fabrics, I have a lot of garments in this range – which actually helped with making outfits!
• I really like the colour combo of red, black and white – must make more things in these colours

I also had a lot of fun watching other participants join in the challenge, specifically on Instagram (I didn’t use Flickr at all I’m afraid – too much hassle uploading photos!) and I really enjoyed chatting to others about it there as well. So thank you so much if you commented on any of my photos and we got to chat, it meant a lot to me!

So I herby declare MMM 2014 a success! Will I join in next year? Probably – and I hope I have many new things to wear next time around as well.

By the way, did anyone else have withdrawal symptoms on the 1st of June? I put on my (non-me-made) clothes in the morning and had to stop myself from taking a selfie in the mirror! Oh, and on the 2nd I actually DID wear a me-made item and instantly wanted to share it with everyone again!

Me Made May : Week 5

Day 26: A Girl for All Seasons Cambie dress. Yeay – I was excited to finally get a chance to wear this dress! I was just going for coffee with my friends and to be honest I did feel a bit over-dressed. I think it’s still a little bit out of my comfort zone, which is funny because I really love it. How does that work?

Day 27: Back to my faithful Jenny skirt and self-drafted cowl top. What can I say, these two have been my saviours of MMM14!

Day 28: It’s the Jenny skirt again

Day 29: It wasn’t quite warm enough for it, but I decided that it would be my last opportunity to wear this Ikat Sheath dress so I piled on the layers. And do you know what, I’m so glad I did. I love this dress but it’s such lightweight cotton I have always thought that it is only suitable for really hot days – turns out a few layers and this dress can be worn all year round (almost)!

Day 30: Fireworks jersey skirt. Easiest skirt I have ever made, but I really love it. It’s a good example of how important the fabric is! A friend in work asked if my skirt was French Connection, so I recon this skirt is a winner!

Day 31: OH MY GOD I DID IT!!!!! Final day of MMM14. I was going to a ‘Vintage Tea Party’ but since it was still May, had to stick to non-vintage. I ended up going with the Cambie dress again though because I thought it had enough vintage elements to it. It was so much of fun to wear (with matching pale blue nails) and I got a lot of compliments on the dress so I declare it a success!

MMM has definitely taken over this blog for the last month so if you are fed up of seeing my selfies I promise I won’t drag it out too much longer – I’ll be back very soon with my final round-up of the challenge and then we are DONE!