Aaand I’m doing Me-Made-May too! Well, I’ve been doing it very privately up until now, but it’s time you saw my pledge and the photos documenting the first half of the month. Yeey! 🙂
‘I, Etemi of The Secret Costumier, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May ’15. I endeavour to wear me-mades as many days as possible during May 2015’
I must admit I was way more excited doing it for the first time – last year, but that might just be because now I have so many handmade clothes that it doesn’t feel like a big challenge anymore. Also, while I really don’t mind repeating outfits, it’s not very exciting when I think about sharing photos of them. For next year I will hopefully be able to pledge to wear me-mades only, which should make things more exciting.
Day 1: Wearing a refashioned thrift store skirt on the first day. I love the jumper (RTW) and pretty much every outfit including it. The skirt is a pencil skirt that can be unbuttoned all the way to the top, so that I can cycle comfortably in it.
Day 2, 3 & 4: Bank holiday weekend spent at home. Leggings made in 15 minutes from an OTT stretchy material bought for testing patterns… Joy. 🙂
Day 5: Wearing a draped dress, with my favourite breton top. This is a pretty versatile dress which happened to be my second attempt at draping, but the invisible zipper needs to be replaced urgently!
Day 6: It’s barely visible, but that’s one of my 3 velvet skirts. It’s a jade green colour in case you were wondering…
Day 7: This is the second version of the backless dress which is a modified version of this Burda number. It was not quite time to wear it in its full backless glory yet, hence the 90’s styling.
Day 8: The latest addition to my velvet circle skirt family – a black one.
Day 10: Wearing the velvet scrap top (made from the leftovers of the velvet skirt – Day 14) and the refashioned jeans. I’m not loving the top, but it makes me feel kind of good that I could save that much fabric from going into a landfill.
Day 11: It was pretty chilly, and I felt uninspired, so opted for the good old military jacket.
Day 12: Oh those red pants! I’ve just gotten some oil on the legs while cycling to Brighton :(. In other news, it fits really nicely straight out of the washing machine, but gets about a size and a half bigger by the end of the day. It’s either plain weird or I’ve cut the waistband on the bias and I shouldn’t have. You be the judge.
Day 13: This marks my first attempt at cutting a pattern on the bias (on purpose)! It’s a copy of my sister’s beautiful little camisole and it turned out quite nicely. It’s made from some poly remnant and was supposed to be a muslin, but I realized that I can actually make it work with some bolder pieces like this skirt/trouser loveliness that I bought in Thailand recently.
Day 14: Velvet skirt numero 3 – or the number one, in the prettiest rust colour out there. Still my favourite (I think I am overusing this word now, so forget the others this is the actual fave)!
Day 15: Attempting to cycle to Brighton from London. I have worn this outfit during the first week already, but I thought it deserves another mention as it took me from work, to cycling through forests (thanks for the misguidance Google) and since I got oil on those red trousers, it took me straight into the many pubs of Brighton too.
I got back from 3 weeks in South East Asia recently, which was undoubtedly the best holiday I have ever been on, and since I made quite a few garments for the trip, I will inevitably flood this blog with holiday photos at some point. So here are a few from the weekend just to warm you up. They are mostly of the area around the Ditchling Beacon (it’s this very steep hill with a nice view) near Brighton, which might not be the most appropriate route for a heavy old city bike and someone who has never ridden outside the city…