Outfit – Page 6 – Hopefully Creative

MMM ’15 – Week 2 and 3

So… I’ve had a holiday! It was fun and I wasn’t too interested in writing blog posts. I did manage to take pictures almost every day. So below you’ll find all my *cough* wonderful outfits.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday I wore my larp outfit, consisting of dress, shirt and apron, including backpack and black cape. I didn’t take a picture on Sunday, because it all was quite the same. I did wear my old school hoody and one of the striped shirts for clearing up the campground.

I wore my wonderful plaid skirt with double zippers on Monday, while staying at my parents. Apparently this was made before blog.

Not willing to change, the Tuesday outfit was the same, apart from the black leggings. I’m wearing red socks, my feet are not usually that colour.

I wore really old, before blog grey pants. These pants are the first pants I ever made and the burda waistband instructions were much to difficult for me. So these are hardly finished on the inside. I did have to sew on a hook and bar before wearing, as the snap that was on had fell off.

Time for a dress. The graduation dress to be precise, still love this one.

Friday were the big grey pants. Again, one of my favourites.

This was another no pants day. I was wearing the sailor skirt, which also seems to be pre-blog. I also learned that this skirt is not meant for bicycling in. It’s almost painful.

Ducks! I love the ducks. I’m fairly certain I wore this outfit on Monday too, to show my boss, who really liked the ducks. And again, no pants, good girl me.

On Sunday I also wore my derby gear, which that week consisted of a striped shirt and my derby shorts.

Knitted HP sweater. Just finished by then. I still haven’t written the blog post for this one.

Yesterdays knitted sweater was covered by my old plaid jacket. These buttons suck to do up, but everybody seems to love this thing.

Again, the grey pants, as seen before. But now topped by a home made jacket. I found a decorative stitch on my machine when making this. I cannot seem to find the post, so I’m guessing the jacket is also pre-blog.

Now, I’ll upload the pictures for the next week and try to finish it all up before May ends. I am enjoying wearing the things I sort of forgot about. Some are actually way more wearable than expected. See you when I find time and energy to write the post!

MMM ’15 – Week 1

Me Made May started this Friday! Exiting right? Well, a couple of things went wrong in this first week. I had neglected performing laundry duty a little too much, and I had to work the entire weekend. Moreover, I couldn’t find my camera until Sunday night, where I found it lurking in the back of my chair. So the first couple of pictures were taken with my work-laptop’s webcam, still the vague outlines of the outfits are visible, right?!

Jeans and my grey knitted sweater. I also wore a self-knitted scarf as I was terribly cold, but that thing is so old that it predates the blog I think.

On the Saturday, I also had to work, and the laundry I’d done the day before wasn’t dry yet. This meant I wore the v-necked version of the stripy shirts that are a staple in my closet. With some linen pants and a yellow scarf.

On Sunday, I didn’t really want to wake up, as it was 23:30 when I got home from work the night before. So I grabbed another staple blue shirt and put it on. When I got home around 17:15 I was very cold, so I got my animal hoodie out to warm up. At night, I had derby practice and exam (I passed!) and wore the tester pants and shirt again (and had found the camera).

On Monday I wore my grey pants, these are still supremely comfortable.

On Tuesday I wore the other version of yesterday’s grey pants, the green pants. Also comfortable. Tuesday also marked the start of my almost two weeks of holiday, and at night I fought to finish my Alice skirt, which you haven’t seen yet.

Wednesday saw me pull out the queen’s top. I still like that one, even if I do not wear it that often because it hasn’t got sleeves. I should make myself a version of this with sleeves… I also finished two projects today, one set of bat earrings that just needed half an hour of oven time, and a present for someone at the larp I’m attending this weekend, which was 10 cm of sewing.

Thursday, time to test the Alice skirt. It does function reasonable well. I need to figure out the waistband situation a little, probably with a type of waist stay. I’ll probably post about it somewhere this week [Edited to add link].

I also wore my owl pyjamas at night.

MMM ’15 – Sign Up

Prepare to be bored out of your brains again, it’s Me-Made-May Time!! I’ve done it before and I will do it again.

For those of you who do not know what MMM is, this post explains it all. You make a pledge to wear items of clothing, accessories or ‘other’ for a specified number of days in the month of May. My pledge is below:

The reason you will be bored is because I’m also planning on documenting all outfits every day. So you’ll be getting me in clothes in round-up posts for an entire month. I’m already sorry.. almost.

I participate in MMM for two reasons, one, it teaches me even more about what I do and don’t wear and why and two, I should challenge my sartorial choices more as I seem to live in jeans and a sweater, with the fur animal hoody over the top.

Wish me luck!

Leafy Graduation

After the fireworks and exhaustion from vacation and new years eve, I spent January 1 and 2 by myself. I took out an stashed piece of fabric that I’ve liked for a while and found a pattern with a design feature I wanted to explore and got to work. I wanted to make a dress to wear to the graduation of the first class of 2015. I was planning on this being it.

This is the pattern I chose. I went for a combination of view 4 and 5 with lengthened sleeves. What is so special, to me, about this pattern is that it has princess seams in front and back. However, it’s got only the one pattern piece to make both the center and side front/back. I wanted to see if and how that works. It turns out, it works!

I made the smallest size, 36-38 and made it from a stretch cotton fabric with giant leaves on it. I hoped it would fit because I’m generally not a size 38, but I figured, smaller is always possible and larger is difficult. The shell of the dress was put together and then I had to decide how to put in the sleeves, right or wrong side out. I pinned in both ways and decided I needed a twist and put in the sleeves wrong side out. I felt less like a giant couch that way.

When it was all together and I basted in the back seam, I found out I could get in and out of it without problems. I also found it was really big… So I took in the back seam a bit more. It should have been 1.5 cm, but it was as much as you can see in the left picture below. There were facings involved in the making of this, and they work perfectly fine!

All in all, it took me 2 days to finish basically everything. Then I took another day to hem. I hate hemming, so it took a while to get that done. I did invisible stitches and I’m quite proud of the way they turned out. On the right is a close up of the neckline. I think it looks nicely done!

Here’s the finished product. I really like it with the white belt.

Last Friday, during graduation, this dress did have its first outing and it performed splendidly. Definitely a keeper, especially with my old petticoat under it.

A Leopard Earns His Band?

A friend of me asked me the other day if I wanted to help him make a jiu jitsu outfit for a stuffed toy. His friend was going to have a jiu jitsu exam not so long after and he wanted to give him a present in case he successfully completed the exam. His idea was to make a jacket for a stuffed animal with a brown belt.

First, he figured out what the favorite animal was that he needed to buy in a stuffed toy version. This turned out to be a leopard. A leopard was found, bought and delivered to his home and then he brought it to me. We (me..) decided that he was going to sew the entire jacket himself. He didn’t have much experience using a sewing machine but it all went very well.

First we started drafting a pattern for the top. It was basically me with a measuring tape, a bit of tracing paper and no fear. I looked at the way the creature itself was put together and figured out a way to make a pattern with 4 pieces. It was all stuck together with painters’ tape (one of my favourite sewing notions) and tried on the toy. It actually worked really well first time around, I only had to change the fronts a little. The leopard was not symmetrical so the pattern pieces for the front were a little different, but that made it fit fairly well.

I instructed my friend to pin the pieces on the fabric we chose and add a seam allowance of around a cm, he wanted to draw it in so he got some chalk. Then cutting it out, which went fine. Lunch! We did some practices on the sewing machine and all went well. This was followed by the most difficult part: figuring out which bits have to be sewn together. Right and wrong took some getting used to, but in the end (with some direction) it was all sewn together. Then came pressing and finishing. I cut the selvedge from a bit of brown fabric and considered the belt to be done.

Last pressing stage done, and the leopard could be dressed. We both couldn’t get over how well it worked. He also did all of it himself! This is the result:

So, I had a fun day with a good friend, we made a present that was appreciated, I made a pattern and my friend learned to sew! All in all I think that’s a good score for a single day. What do you think?

Lessons from MMM ’13

So, what have I learned. It’s quite a lot actually.

1. I need more t-shirts, 3 just doesn’t cut it.
2. I need to adapt some things so they wear better.
3. I should chuck the things I really don’t want to wear.

I’ll pop a list here of the things I’ve not worn, why and what I’m going to do with them

Too short: chuck

Stain: in the wash, then wear

Bad weather: does get worn

Corset: difficult to lace, not the right occasion

Straps keep falling off, make into a skirt

Forgot I owned it, will wear.

Has already been chucked.

Forgot I made it.

Too big, is in the process of being made smaller.

Flimsy. Chuck.

Still doesn’t fit right, chucked

Chucked, had holes

Weather sucked, I do wear it

Again, bad weather

So weather, bad fit and holes are the reason I didn’t wear a lot of my me made clothes. I shall remember this. And make more t-shirts as soon as my machine doesn’t skip stitches in knits anymore.

MMM ’13 29-31

The last stretch! It did work, worn some not-worn-this-month-before clothes even! So here’s the last rundown:

29: Grey pants which you’ve seen before I think. Dreary day, not fun.

30: New appearance: black top (here). I remembered why I don’t wear this top often, the straps are too long or in any case, they slide of. I need to fix that.

31: Purple! Purple dress (not blogged apparently?), it was good weather! This dress feels weird on me because its shoulder straps cross in the back, which I never have. It also doesn’t have pockets..

So I’ve managed to get through MMM ’13 without not wearing anything me-made (or significantly altered). This means I’ve succeeded in my challenge! Whoop! I’m planning on making a post with the things I didn’t wear and how I could change them so I could wear them. To see if I’ve learned anything from MMM. I think I’m going to try again next year too, hopefully with some more variation (not just stripy t-shirts). Now, I need to finish that black eyelet blouse I’ve been trying to finish for weeks..

MMM ’13 22-28

And other week has passed! I did actually manage to wear something me made again each day. Although I forgot to take picture one day until after I had showered. There has been a little sun even, the past two days. I also had a fun weekend in my previous hometown. That’s the change of scenery.

22: Dance class! So I changed out of the stripy and into the blue t-shirt. I felt really sick after dance class, so I struggled home, and crawled into bed, only to crawl out again and take a picture of this bunch of clothing, so ignore the mess. You’ve already seen these a million times, they are my most worn garments this month for sure.

23: A stripy t-shirt again, and the hat that accompanies my me made coat. Also not blogged.

24: Packing! The yellow ‘thing’ (here). It gets really mixed reactions, some love it, some really hate it. If they hate it, it’s mostly because of the colour though.

25: Same yellow thing. Fun day over at my friends. We talked for a bit and went to a party.

26: Me made skirt, also unblogged. I still like this skirt.

27: Refashioned red/black skirt and me made modesty shorts (here and here respectively). Since I wore modesty shorts I figured it was ok to lift up my skirt. I was actually planning on not wearing tights and therefore requiring the modesty shorts, however, I took them with me in case it would be colder than I’d anticipated and sort of forgot to take them off. The skirt gets really really wrinkly and I didn’t feel like ironing it, so that’s a lesson learned. It also sticks to my legs? Dislike that too.

28: Today! I wore another stripy shirt (seen enough of those yet? I promised they get laundered..). I had my thesis presentation today, so I have amassed a total of 10% of my final grade. The presentation grade I got was 8/10, which I’m really happy with. Only somewhat over a month before I’m supposed to become.. professional (that scares me..).

MMM ’13 15-21

Rain, rain, rain, and a little more rain. It’s getting really depressing.

15: I had my first of 5 rock and roll dance classes. It was a lot of fun! However, I soaked my shirt, it’s so intensive! So for most of the day I was wearing the purple shirt, and after class I changed into the black one, both store-bought. I did wear my first knitted sweater (here). On the right, my shoes. The ones I love, a lot! Yes, purple and red. Weird combo, I know. However, they are fantastic! You’ve seen them a lot, and will see them even more!

16: Rain. Lots of it. Yes, the combination of a fancy shiny dress and a grey sweater is bad, but I wanted to wear the dress and couldn’t find anything else to wear. The right picture shows the top (not wet) versus the bottom (very wet). I hate rain… Like the dress though, even if it’s too long. I think the dress is pre-blog.

17: Yellow sweater (here), second hand scarf, random pants. I got the scarf at our local thrift-market (I don’t know if that’s a word..), the whole village hands in their unwanted stuff and it gets sold the Saturday before Mothersday (the second Sunday of May). It was fun to go there, even if it did rain (and rain and rain).

18: I took a shower after a long but fun day, then remembered I forgot to take a photograph. So this is the solution. The pants are home-made, the first I’ve ever made.

19: Sunday, so another ‘lounge’ outfit. Put on the shirt especially for this MMM thing (here).

20: Pentecost, school’s closed so I had to work from home. I wore my cooks shirt (here), it doesn’t really work under something because of the sleeve ties. I need to figure out a way to wear this more. It’s also a bit short.

21: I wasn’t feeling too well, so I wanted a comfort sweater. I chose my red one, to match my shoes! (Yes, I’m an idiot). I chose the same shirt as 19 because it was still fine. My mood led me to go by a shop to pick up a scarf to ‘hide’ in. It actually does look quite happy, if you ask me.

So, still few dresses, stupid rain. I just really hate rain, it makes me not want to dress nice, because I know it will be ruined anyways. A week and a bit left. Maybe I’ll get to wear some skirts next week? Fingers crossed, I hope those who are participating are liking their experiment!

MMM ’13 8-14

So, second week! I managed to wear something me made or refashioned each day. Admittedly, Sunday was uninspired and Tuesday pretty much the same as Monday but I did put effort in, that counts right. I was actually planning on wearing more skirts and dresses.. However, the weather is decidedly uncooperative. It’s raining all the time, and I think I hate wet tights even more than wet pants, so pants it is.

8: Me made jacket, not blogged. High heels, so sitting mostly, I love the hat though.

9: High waisted skirt, me made, still love it, and bow tie belt (here). Wasn’t feeling my best that day, so I wanted something bright, that’s where the socks came in.

10: Two! Again! One of the striped shirts and a red skirt and black houndstooth skirt (apparently pre blog but same fabric used here)

11: Blue shirt (here), and I’m wearing a tie over my head. There was a market in my town, I found a mickey mouse tie and got it. I really like it, don’t know if it will ever get worn.

12: Sunday.. I did not feel like getting dressed. So here you see my weekend ‘clothes’, the live in sweater and sweatpants. But especially for me made may.. I found something me made. SOCKS! (here)

13: Time for something refashioned (here). I love those shoes! Red (and purple) and oh so comfortable.

14: Remarkably similar to yesterday. Tied the ties in another way, lower down to create a top effect, added a red spotted hat and an accessory in the form of a sticky letter I found yesterday as a remainder of a comedy show I went to.

More dresses next week! (I hope..)

Category: Outfit