Sewing Dares - 5 Months In!

Back at New Years, I started handing out Sewing Dares… and wow! I can’t believe how many people joined in on the fun! 

Here are the finished dares so far: 

• The original dare was for Kristin at K-Line to knit a pair of socks - something she’d planned to do in her NY resolutions. Her dare is most definitely completed… she went from disliking socks-knitting, to grudgingly being fascinated, to liking it, to make more!  Tenacity, thy name is Kristin!


• The second dare was for Pretty Greivances. She bemoaned a lack of TNT blouse, so I dared her to choose one pattern and make three tops! **Dare Completed!** I like all of her new tops! 


• Sew Busy Lizzy:Hack a favourite pattern into something new. She’s going to make the Maria of Denmark Day/Night Cowl into a dress, and I know it will be fab! **Dare completed!** But wait! There’s more! One dare was not enough! She’s going to make a bathing suit AND an outfit for her trip to London! That’s bravery!


• Unique Schmuck: Oanh is going to make two sundresses from the same pattern, at the same time! **Dare Completed!** Two lovely dresses finished! 


• Three Dresses Project: Leila is going to (gasp!) use a pattern more than once!  **Dare Completed!** In fact, she made multiples of 3 different patterns! :) 


• Sew Exhausted makes beautiful things for her family - Now she’s been dared to make something nice for herself! **Dare Completed!**


• Notches and Notions: Make something using at least 1 of the giant buttons she accidentally ordered for another project**Dare Completed** 


• Maria of Denmark: Make fun underwear and some lounge pants! **Dare Completed!**


• House of Pinheiro is going to make a loose-fitting top - with Maria of Denmark’s Kimono Tee PDF pattern to boot! **Dare Completed!**


• Stephanie is going to start a blog! **Dare Completed!** Go check our her lovely new blog!


• Jen has been dared to be social on Twitter every day for a week.  **Dare Completed!** @grainlinestudio was a busy tweeter! 


• Sew and So is making #onedresstorulethemall - her wedding dress! meanwhile, she’s been dared to join twitter and post a list of things she’ll make once the wedding dress is done! **Dare Completed!** Well done! 


• My original dare from Pretty Grievances was to mix prints. **Dare Completed!**


• PunkMik is going to make something from Gertie’s book - work appropriate for her new job! :) **Dare Completed!**


• Handmade by Heather B: Heather is going to make something flirtatious for going out/events. Va-va-voom!  **Dare Completed!** It’s really fabulous! 


• Chris Lucas is going to make herself a cute high-waisted pencil skirt! **Dare Completed!**


• Bimble and Pimple: Amanda make a plain single-colour dress! (I trust she will still make it fun though, with texture or shape or trim or something!) **Dare Completed!** I want an exact copy of this skirt!


• Ginger Makes is going to bite the bullet and make a bodice sloper! Oh yeah - and she let Oona pick out fabric for her next Mood Network project!**Dare Completed!** In glorious, glorious style!


• OonaBallona has accepted a dare from GingerMakes and SownBrooklyn to make her dear husband a shirt! Will there be vibrant spandex leggings to match? **Dare Completed** And lookin’ good!


• Jamie at Such a Strange Girl is going to make her first knit top! **Dare Completed** Nice timing! :) 


• Sown Brooklyn will make something designed/drawn by one of her kids!   **Dare Completed!** Wow. I think this was the toughest of all the sewing dares that I handed out - but she’s done it! A superhero inspired dress based on a drawing of her daughter’s! Go check it out!


• Jagoda was dared by Catja from Geometry to make something with her Ikea fabric - and she made floral pants for spring! 


• Kat from Petticoats and Peplums is sewing  matching mother-daughter outfits for herself and her adorable little girl! **DARE COMPLETED!** Oh my gosh. So adorable! 


• Catja from Gjeometry is making something for herself with Ikea fabric from a recent haul, and also de-fuggifying an 80’s pattern! **Skirt DARE COMPLETED!** It’s so cute on her! 


• Buzy Lizzie in Brizzy is going to make a vintage shirtdress!  ***DARE COMPLETED!*** In fact, she made 2! One for the Mad Men challenge, and one for Sew for Victory! 


• Rachel at My Messings is done hosting her Hollyburn sewalong, and is ready for a dare: To make something, anything, that goes under a dress! **Dare Completed!**  Go check out what she has under her dress! ;) 


• Made with Hugs and Kisses is in training to be a teacher, so I’ve dared her to sew an interview dress! ***DARE COMPLETED!*** And she got a job! Yippee!!!


• SewTell has just moved to a new place, so she’s going to sew some cushions for her couch! ***DARE COMPLETED*** Didn’t she choose cool fabrics? Love it!


• My awesomesauce sister Anne is a dye-hard knitter (See what I did there? Hahaha - puns.) She’s going to design and co-sew a knitting project bag! She’s started with a Pinterest board full of ideas… ***DARE COMPLETED!*** We had a lot of fun figuring out how to make zip bags with a vinyl window!


• Andrea at Stitch Parade is going to make a garment (using a print!) that celebrates her new life this year on the west coast of Canada. ***DARE COMPLETED!*** It’s gorgeous! I’m looking forward to meeting Andrea when she moves back to Toronto this summer!


• Becky from Sew-and-So is busy finishing up her wedding dress, but after that, she’s going to indulge/break her stashbusting pledge by buying new fabric and a pattern for something fun! ***DARE COMPLETED!*** She’s chosen great fabric and a cool pattern - Can’t wait to see it sewn up after the wedding! 


• Kate took a break from blogging to plan her wedding, but she’s officially Mrs. Nakano now, and she’s got a new blog to match! She’s been dared to make and blog something soon! ***DARE COMPLETED!*** Kate Blogged not one, but TWO new garments!   


• Sally from The Quirky Peach is going to use stash fabric to make one of the new indie patterns she bought recently! She did give it a shot, but wisely tossed it when the fabric wasn’t working out… ***DARE COMPLETED!*** Aren’t her shorts cute?!?

These dares are still in progress: 

• I’ve been dared to make a maxi dress out of Liberty Lifestyle fabric…  And to use piping, and learn to rotate darts. I’d better start cracking!


• Hot Mess Heifer is going to make not 1, not 2, but 3 t-shirts! (She’s made two already! :) 


• Seamless’ Elena has been dared by SewBusyLizzy to make one dress for work, and style it 4 ways!


• Clare from SewDixieLou: Make an everyday, “signature” dress from her vintage stash


• Inge from IngeMaat: Remake one of her least “Top 5 Fails” from 2012 into something (anything!) that she loves or is useful. 


• Erin at Dog Under My Desk is going to sew a t-shirt! (You won’t regret it - T-shirts are my favourite sewing project!) 


• Amity Originals is going to make trousers! (Brave woman!) 


• Suzy Sewing is going to do two dares: Make a t-shirt AND use a croquis for sketching dress designs.


• Buckingham Road has accepted two dares: Make something out of knit, and make pants, a skirt or a dress to go with her fantastic Cordova Jacket! 


• Thewallinna gave herself a serious challenge: Finish her couture dress!


• Falling Through Your Clothes has too much in her stash (poor woman! :P) so she is going to use one piece to sew something for herself, and give away another piece or use it to sew for someone else!


• Suzanne of http://mybeaubaby.blogspot.com/ has been dared by Oona, Ginger and others to make a garment that she’ll proudly show the guts of, perhaps to the point of it being reversible. 


• GMarie is going to recreate a RTW dress with red cherries from Vogue 8728! 


• Hanny Bobbins is going to use her new serger to make a knitting project bag!


• Velosewer practically dared herself to make a bra, so I added in the challenge of making matching underwear! 


• Kirsty from Rocket Sews is going to draft her own knit dress, and maybe even make a tutorial for us! 


• Erin from Miss Crayola Creepy is going to remake one of the patterns from the Colette Sewing Handbook - I first met her during the sewalong this time last year, so it seems like a perfect dare!


• Rochelle from Lucky Lucille (also part of the Colette Sewalong with Erin!) is going to make a vintage playsuit for summer, and then release her first PDF sewing pattern! Go Rochelle!


• Dottie Doodle is going to make a comfy outfit for her days working from home that is also cute enough to wear out and about! 


• Sandra from Just Sew Sandra is going to pick one of the challenges from the Great British Sewing Bee and try it out herself! Will she finish a project in the time limit? Wait and see! :) 


• Anna from A Look of One’s Own took on two dares: make something with one of her new Sewaholic patterns, and make a circle skirt for dancing! 

 For those of us with incomplete dares hanging over our heads… remember, stop if it’s not fun!  Lemme know, and I’ll scratch it off the list. If it’s not exciting and motivating, there’s no point, right? We’ll give you a new, more exciting dare instead. This is our hobby, for goodness sakes! :) Make it fun. 

If that hasn’t scared you off… There’s always space for new dares! If you want one, just leave a comment below or hollar at my on Twitter. Get the graphic yourself, and start sewing/blogging/daring more sewists! 

 Happy sewing! 

Look, Ma! No Sewing!

For once, I’m going to post about a crafty thing that’s not sewing! I used to do lots of other things… needle felting, embroidery, cross-stitch, making jewelery… but in the last 18 months sewing clothes has almost completely taken over! This month in Me-Made May I’ve been getting the yearning for some new accessories though, so last weekend I busted out my jewelery supplies and got making!

Years ago I won a prize of a whole bunch of Fimo polymer clay, so i decided it was time to use it! (I won it when i was working at Girl Guides of Canada National office… not enough people had entered a Fimo competition in our magazine, so my bosses asked a bunch of us to submit some things to make it look better! I ended up with about $100 worth of Fimo.

Have you ever used Polymer clay? It’s a hard plasticy clay that you mix, shape and then bake to harden.  I used as a kid to make dollhouse food and hideous 80’s earrings… Something I was keen to avoid this time! I’ve been pinning ideas for a while, so it was time to give it a try! 

I ended up with 5 or 6 necklaces, and a bunch of beads left over… i forgot how fun it is to tinker around with beads! Nothing can really go wrong - you can always rip it apart and try again! Like sewing though, it’s deceptively expensive… I ended up spending $35 at the bead store just to get some pliers, beads, and some findings to stick everything together! Then I went to the cheap accessories store in the mall, and walked about with 3 necklaces for $10. Hmm. Hardly worth making my own! 

I did have fun though, and it was great to try my hand at a hobby I haven’t done in a while! Do you have any hobbies that sewing has replaced? Do you dig them up from time to time? Lots of people seem to balance knitting and sewing… or baking and sewing… What else?

MMM20-25

Oh man - so close to the end! I have heaps of clothes left to wear though… I”m hoping the weather stays nice for the next week so I can wear my summer favourites! 

Let’s do this. 

MMM20: 

2/9 colours, MM red capris and tee. I’m happy to report that these pants have loosened up a bit with wear and are now less indecently tight! :) 

MMM21: 

3/9 colours, MM Tiramisu. Now that I’m wearing my Tiras without a long winter coat, I’m finding that the wind can lift up my skirt and flash the world very easily! Anyone else find this with full skirts? (Besides Oanh, who wrote a hilarious post about something similar!?

MMM22: 

4/9 colours, MM Alma dress. Seriously, given how crazy bright this dress is, you’d think it would have more of my palette colours!  

MMM23: 

4/9 colours, MM Scout Knit tee. This was a sad wardrobe day! I got all dressed in a cute bright summer skirt and new stripe tank, then realised it was 10 degres and quickly threw on anything warm I could find. Also realised that when I lean over to lecture 6 year olds on why swearing is bad, this shirt becomes a window to my whole bra. Guess how I figured that out? 

MMM24: 

Total fail! The only palette colour I’m wearing is the poorly-fitting grey jeans that you can see! Instead, I’m showing you my first try at the Kirsten Kimono tee pattern and a beautiful button necklace that my Mom bought me on a recent Morris dancing trip to Britain! (Yup, my parents are border Morris dancers, and they regularly spend a few weeks dancing in England and Wales. We’re a family full of nerds!)

This was our Track and Field Day at school - and instead of the usually sunny, hot May weather, it was windy and only 3 degrees! On top of this I wore several sweaters and a long winter coat. Brrr!!!

The Friday theme this week is “hometown”, so here’s my town: 

Exciting, hunh? 

MMM25:

4/9 colours, MM capris. After the boring cold-weather clothes I’d been wearing for a few days, I wanted something bright and fun! I love how bright these red pats are… they make my RTW red jeans looks dark and dull! 

And that’s it for now! Not many days left… 

So, now for something completely unrelated… How do you feel about the new Flickr? Have you found anything it handles better? I’m finding it visually more cluttered, which is frustrating… but since we’ve all got to live with it, I’m trying to learn to like it!

Pants!

Pants! I made pants! It took me months of muslins, and the fit is still far from perfect… but they are totally wearable, and therefore good enough for now! 

The pattern I’m using is the Style Arc Elle pant. It’s a pull-on, elastic waist pant made for stretch wovens, which is pretty close to my favourite RTW pants. It’s also super basic - no fly, no pockets! 

The first time I sewed it up, I was really thrilled! It fit just like my RTW pants! Sweet! But then I start obsessing about the fit problems that my RTW pants share… namely, wrinkles under the butt! I did my research, got help from awesome sewcialists in Pants Club, and made 5 more muslins… and I really thought I’d made some progress! But looking at the pictures you’re about to see, the problems are still there! 

Damn you, wrinkles!

Making pants has really helped me understand the, uh, unique features of my legs. Wide hips, broad thighs, full butt, full belly, knock knees, and more! That’s a lot of separate adjustments to do, all of which end up impacting the fit in other areas. It’s a complex geometry problem which I don’t fully understand!

On the plus side, these are currently my most comfortable jeans! I’d worn them a few times since washing when I took these photos, but the denim holds up well. The waistband is so ridiculously high that it never shifts around or sags lower! (The waistband is a great construction detail, btw: It’s a self-fabric rectangle, with inch-wide elastic zigzagged in place. It’s the same circumference as the waist, so it holds snug without pulling tight.) 

Even better, the pattern is so simple that I’ve been able to whip up a few pairs already. These capris actually came before the jeans above…

I’ve been adding simple patch pockets to each pair, but it’s surprisingly difficult to figure out just where to put them! These ones are a bit too high, others too wide…

Oh look! Wrinkles!

Here’s what they look like in motion… If this is what they look like most of the time, then I’m happy enough! I don’t think they scream “Homemade!”, and they feel good on. 

Somehow I got cocky with these red ones though… I think I overdid a back crotch adjustment, and suddenly nothing lined up! A hot mess all around. Somehow these seem tighter than my other pairs, too, even though they are a very stretchy denim… Next time I’m going to slash and spread to add some ease! 

Look! Less wrinkles when I dance! 

All in all, I’m really thrilled to have made some functional pants. I’ve got a whole pile of fabric to make more, but I need to figure out some fit things first. Have you made pants? How did it go? If you’ve got any concrete fitting advice to give me, I’d be very happy to hear it! 

MMM14-19

Oh, Me-Made May, you sure do take over! Every time I sit down to blog some newly finished items, I realise that I’ve fallen behind blogging about MMM! Time for another weekly review first, I guess… 

This year I pledged to wear MM clothes every day this month, and to create outfits using my self-assigned wardrobe colour palette. 

Here goes!

MMM14

4/9 colours, MM Peony dress, refashioned sweater (turned it into a cardigan), and “belt” made from fold-over elastic. 

My second ever dress! Made last February sometime… I had to alter the heck out of the pattern to make it work, but I didn’t know ay better back then. Now I shy away from Colette patterns for just that reason. Here’s a post I wrote last fall about my many versions of the Peony pattern, if you are interested…

MMM15: 

2/9 colours. MM Renfrew, a la Zoe! This top is made from a really lovely  navy double knit… I just wish I could remember where it came from! The stripe fabric is thin and not-so-nice, so I underlined it with a white jersey. Just spray-basted them together with quilting spray, and sewed as one!

MMM16: 

Self drafted tee and thrifted chambray shirt (Seriously, blogosphere, I blame YOU for making me want this shirt! Its not a style I would have picked before… but with all the lovely Archers being made, and the obsessive shopping for chambray fabric, when i saw this is just had to give it a go! 

Remember how in my last post I said I was going to try to beat my maximum numbers of colours worn? Well, you gave me some great suggestions which I can’t wait to try… but in the mean time, this shirt does all the work! 

7/9 colours! Bam! I got this jersey for $3/m last summer. I have to say it’s not the best quality, but come on, that print! It shrank up over time, so I recently replaced the original folded-under hem with a wide band. Now it’s back in rotation!

MMM17: 

4/9 colours, MM Renfrew hack tank. 

Woohoo! It’s the Friday of the long weekend, and my husband handed me a drink that matches my outfit! (Also, aparently my combo of turquoise pants, electric blue cardi, and blue wall turned the who pic a funny colour!)

MMM18

3/9 colours. MM Style Arc capris (again) and a new Day-to-Night cowl! 

Remember when I wishing for something a little more “fun” to wear on weekends? Well, so many of you suggested this pattern from Maria of Denmark that I just had to give it a go! I’d actually made one before for the animal print challenge back in the winter,but the print placement and fabric choices just felt off. It’s a great easy pattern though, so I have happy to make a nicer version!

I think this top is the anti-Cake top: If I tried to do the “Look! No gapping!” pose, you’d all see straight to my belly button! (In other words, when I leave over, the cowl drapes right open and everything is on show! Not that my husband seemed to mind that feature… Did I mention I’ve already made another one? ;) 

MMM19

3/9 colours. MM kimono tee (traced from RTW), Style Arc capris (finally photographed and ready to be blogged!), and a polymer clay necklace I made this morning! 

It’s a lazy Sunday today, so I actually spent most of the day in Maria of Denmark lounge pants and a sweater knit cardigan. It’s warm during the day, so I switched to this. I spent a couple house this morning making beads with polymer clay and fiddling around with jewellery. (Blog post to follow, eventually!)

***

So here we are, with 11 days left in May… What colours have I worn most? 

Navy = jeans, most of the time… and white tend to be mixed in prints, so no surprise there! I really did think I wore more fuschia though, and less emerald… and more grey and red! It’s interesting how evenly worn most of the colours are, in fact! We’ll see what happens for the rest of the month! 

P.S. I’ve been having fun making wardrobe colours palettes for a few other bloggers… It’s really neat going through someone else’s blog pics and trying to figure out what colours they are consistently drawn to! If anyone else is interested, I’d be happy to give your colours a try!

MMM11-14

MMM11 

A measly 1 colour from my palette! I really think this purple needs to be added though, because I own an awful lot of RTW tops in this shade! 

MM STyle Arc Jeans, cropped out, and appliqued Echino birds on the hoodie.

MMM12

3/9 wardrobe palette colours.

MM flannel scout tee and McCalls cardigan, blogged here.

It snowed ALL DAY! WTF, Canada? It’s May! This was Mother’s Day, so I spent 2 hours each way driving to see my mother-in-law. (And somehow, I just happened to find myself in a fabric store on the way home! ;)

MMM13

4/9 colours. MM Tiramisu dress, blogged here.

This dress is so comfy! It’s a drapy rayon knit, which means that the self-drafted a-line skirt hangs quite close… but it feels comfier than pyjamas! 

* * * 

Oh, as as an added MMM bonus, my sister just spent 3 days at a conference and happened to wear made-by-me clothes for every day! I’m so excited that she actually wears that things I make… certainly motivates me to make her more! And we’ve cut a deal for her to knit me a cowl for the fall - sweet!

(She is very kindly letting me share her very-early-morning selfies!)

Recognise the green skirt that I wore last week and then promptly gave away? Turns out it’s a much better match for her wardrobe colours, which are slightly warmer than mine… (Those are knitting inspiration pics, BTW…)

So my new goal? Wear an outfit with 5 colours! I’ve had a couple of 4-colour outfits… which makes sense, because I tend to wear either warm or cool tones with a neutral, but not warm and cool at once. Can you picture any 5 of these colours together? Let me know what you think might work! 

 

A Sewcialist Logo WInner!

Thanks to everyone who voted on the sewcialist logos - We now have a winner! 

Thanks to Make Magazine the winner will get 

• A 1 year subscription to Make magazine generously offered by our official sponsor Make

Thanks to individual donors (this is not coming from Make: Magazine), the winner will also receive:

• A $100 cash prize


• A custom ipad sleeve

I really loved seeing the votes role in - clearly we all identified with different aspects of the designs! I love that we had so much range in our 6 submissions… and as one of the people donating money to the cash prize, I am very happy that the sewing community had their say!

 

The winner is…

 

Joost!

1st Runner up: Anne

2nd Runner up: Sabina

A big congratulations to Joost and all designers for their hard work.

What are you going to do with our new Sewcialists logo? First, head over to Joost’s site and choose your colors. 

Then what?

• Put it on your blog


• Make an iron-on transfer and iron it on a t-shirt or a tote


• Sketch it on your Trapper Keeper


• Stencil it on your drum head.

The options are endless. What are you going to do with it?

UPDATE: Joost has asked that the prize money be sent to a charity. We’ve chosen From Boston to Bindis. Check out the Indiegogo. It’s a wonderful project. There are 30 days left to donate thru Indiegogo.

MMM5-10

Wow. MMM is just rushing by this year! Thanks so much for all of your supportive comments when I was whining about job stuff in my last post - It was another rough week this week, but c’est la vie, right? I have faith that this coming week is going to be better! :)  

MMM5: 

3/9 colours from my wardrobe colour palette.

MM: Style Arc leggings, French terry knit Scout (not-so-woven) tee, and infinity scarf.

Here I am, blatently showing off my sister’s lovely rainbow blanket to distract from a rather basic outfit… 

MMM6

3/9 colours from my wardrobe palette

MM Alma blouse, made with reversible Japanese double gauze. Blogged here.

Can’ you believe this is my first time wearing this top? I made it last fall and it’s hung in the closet ever since. I didn’t like all the buttons and plackets and cuffs that I’d had to add after botching a neckline alteration. It’s still not my favourite, but wearing it really helped me appreciate it’s strengths: the double gauze is buttery soft and drapes beautifully over my bumps and lumps, but the darts of the Alma shape it really nicely. I think I need to give some other double gauze a go this month!

MMM7

4/9 colours from my wardrobe palette

MM Tiramisu dress made with ITY border print fabric.

Tiramisu #5 for me! (And #9, if you include sewing for others!) I got so many compliments while wearing this dress - and not one person said, “Hey, don’t you own that dress in another colour?” Phew! 

MMM8

3/9 colours… barely! 

MM skirt, modified from the Colette Truffle dress. 

Oh man, this one *barely* fit the colour palette challenge… and consequently it was SO HARD to make an outfit I liked around this green skirt! I bought the fabric thinking that I could pull out the pops of turquoise and coral in the print, but that wasn’t as easy as I thought. In the end I went with this 9 year old cardigan (from my bridesmaid outfit at my sister’s wedding!) and this 5 years old lace cami from Japan. End result? I felt like it was an outfit I’d have liked 5 years ago. 

Don’t worry, there is a happy ending - I gave the skirt that night to my sister, and she loves it! 

MMM9

4/9 wardrobe palette colours.

MM sloper dress.

I love this dress! It’s made with a quilting cotton that I stashed just before leaving Japan… and it’s a gaudy, bright, rainbow! I’m such a sucker for bright colours on a dark background. 

3/9 colours from my wardrobe palette - though you’d never know the jeans are blue from the picture!

MM Style Arc jeans and self-drafted kimono tee.

Not much to say here… I got less than .7m of this rayon knit for $3 (with printing errors), and just barely squeaked a top out of it. I love the colours, even if my camera didn’t appreciate the saturated colours! :P

********************************************

It’s occurred to me lately that 2 years ago I’d never even THINK of wearing a loose/tent-like top like a Scout tee, and now I wear them all the time! On the other hand, I’ve also realise that my wardrobe is a bit, uh, professional and demure. I don’t have ANY me-made’s that I couldn’t wear to work. I want something for a night out or a day shopping with friends… and more confusingly, I’m not really sure what I would want to wear these days to show a bit of skin. (I’m starting to look forward to my Seamless Pledge ending so I can go buy some clothes and find out!) 

Does anyone have a suggestion for a knit top that is a bit more youthful or sexy? Help!

Me-Made May, Days 1-4

Hurray! It’s time for MMM!

Here’s my pledge this year: ‘I, Gillian from Crafting a Rainbow, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May ‘13. I endeavour to wear me-made clothing that matches my personal colour palette for the duration of May 2013’I’ve been honing my palette all year - these are the colours that I love, look good in, and am allowed to stash! My goal for this month is to see if they really are the colours I wear and sew, or if it’s just wishful thinking! 

(The eagle-eyed among you might notice that I already tweaked my palette before starting… I had a paler coral in there originally, but I switched it for the cool pink on the right.)

How’s it going? Well, spoiler alert: I’m pretty sure one of those colours does not belong! 

 Day 1: 2/9 colours, Me-Made head to toe! Renfrew tank, McCall’s cardi, Style Arc jeans, and me-made necklace. 

I had to wear blue for a school event on May 1st, which lead to me making a rushed royal blue top the night before… which of course, ended up with a wobbly hem and a weird fit! Doomed to be pyjamas, I think. As I was digging through my (clean) laundry piles looking for something better to wear, I found this cardigan, which doesn’t get much wear…. but score! It worked for this outfit.

Also: LOOK! A remote! I’ve borrowed my dad’s DSLR, tripod and remote to make picture-taking a bit easier. I love getting my husband to take outdoor pics when there’s time, but at least this way I can grab a quick shot before work in the morning!

Day 2: 4/9 colours, MM sleeveless Pendrell blouse

Not much to say - I stashed this fabric just before leaving Japan, and made it up during MMM last year.

Day 3: Water-themed fishy face! 2/9 colours. MM Scout woven tee and Style Arc black pants. 

My class had a zoo-themed party today, so I wore this koala top with a very 80’s animal necklace of my mom’s! I got funny looks for other staff all day, but who am I to be shy when there is a dress-up theme? 

Day 4: 4/9 colours on a MM Renfrew dress!

Enough of all that coral - time for greens and blues! I didn’t quite buy enough of this fabric, so the skirt is a big snug… emphasizes my gut IRL! Added to which the waistband is think in some spots and thin in other… I think I’m going to have to hack it up and make a peplum tee at some point.

(In other news, I spent the day working on job applications for myself and my husband. His temporary teaching job just ended 2 months earlier than we hoped, and new laws mean that I’ve got all kinds of hoops to jump through just to be eligible to be hired for the same kind of job next year!  It’s all pretty frustrating, and means that we’ll be living with my parents for a while longer… They are wonderful, and have already let us live here for two years. Unfortunately work is so hard to come by that two qualified, experienced 30 year-old teachers can’t support themselves! ERGGGGGHHHHH!)

 

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, clothes. Here are my thoughts so far: 

• With all kinds of employment drama going on, it feels pretty superficial to think about clothes every day… but on the other hand, it gives me something fun to focus on! 


• I’m enjoying my palette challenge… but something off with the emerald green. It’s a colour I love, but turns out I don’t really own any! I think it maybe needs to be changed to a more grass green, or even a leaf green… or then again, maybe I just need to sew more with that colour! 


• I loved participating so much last year… but I have to admit, I’m already finding this year a bit overwhelming! The Flickr group is HUGE!

How do you feel about MMM? Do you get inspired or bored when it takes over the blogosphere? If you participate in it, do you like the daily dress-up or the online community more?