Ok, Me Made May wasn't really that bad. But, as they say, when it rains it pours, and a lot of stuff happened this month. Not all bad, but it was definitely a roller coaster in the middle of the month.
Day 25
What I Wore: My gingham violet blouse with jeans
What I Did: Worked from home. Wallace wanted to join me for the picture.
Day 26
Eek!! I didn't even realize I had missed a day until I was compiling this post. I didn't even do anything exciting that day, just a lot of working out (see recap at the end of the post). Oops!
Day 27
What I Wore: My new Cambie dress. I wore it for the first time.
What I Did: Took pictures in it then went out with the hubby. Nothing super exciting but it was a fun dress to wear.
Day 28
What I Wore: My irish dance dress! I didn't make the whole dress but I did do a minor refashion to it with my mom's help.
What I Did: I was at a competition allllll day! Like my new wig? ;)
Day 29
What I Wore: The California Winter Tunic
What I Did: Nada. Worked during the day. Had a ridiculously early meeting in the morning (seriously, the sun was no where to be seen and it's been getting light here around 6ish). When I got home, I changed into something more comfortable.
Day 30
What I Wore: Pajama Party pants... I know. Again.
What I Did: I did some tedious tasks in the sewing room in the evening. Pre-washing fabrics and having to iron them is a necessary evil and I don't do it nearly enough.
Day 31
What I Wore: The Cambie dress again!
What I Did: I wore it to work. I ended up going to a work event that mainly consisted of women and got so many compliments on the dress. One person told me it was very 'Adele.' Hm, I'll take it.
Reflections on Me Made May 2012
Aside from missing the one day, I would still call it a success. It was a month of many challenges and there were several points where I almost quit, just from outside stresses. In the end I convinced myself to stick with it. I do love a good challenge.
1. Doing Me Made anything is tough when you take on a workout challenge. Again, due to my competitive nature, I did go more into this workout challenge than I probably needed to... but I really want to win. I mentioned before that my local fitness class studio, the Dailey Method, has a challenge each month. The client who attends the most in any one month period wins a free class for themselves and 22 friends. I probably didn't need to take this on in May but I knew that my June and July availability would be iffy due to vacation schedules, work craziness, etc. And the person who won last month only had to go 21 times... that's only like 5 times a week. I could totally do that.
Ok, well, by the end of the day today, I hope to have gone 30 times in May. This doesn't necessarily mean I went every day - I took some days off. But I did several double up days to make up for that. So when you're constantly wearing workout clothes, none of which you made, it can be a challenge. But now that I have a serger... who knows? Maybe the next Me Made challenge will be easier? Anyways, I don't know if I won or not. Wish me luck! It was supposed to end yesterday but we had a bomb threat (crazy, right??) down the street from the studio a couple of weekends ago so they added one more day to the challenge to make up for it.
2. Another challenge (as you see, when I go all out, I go ALL OUT), is that I got a little more involved in standup paddle boarding this month. I first tried it in Hawaii but as we're so close to the ocean I wanted to see if I could keep it up over here. Well, wearing a swimsuit, or even a wet suit due to freezing ocean weather in Northern California, is not conducive to a sewing challenge. But it was only for a couple of weekends and only for a few hours each day.
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| Ok, the day wasn't as cold as it looks, but the water sure was... |
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| My rental board, paddle, and me looking like a seal. |
3. On to the actual clothes I wore. While my separates are still growing, I tended to favor a few pieces - mainly newer pieces that I made. I think I need to weed through my closet to figure out the wearability of some of the older pieces. Mainly because I wasn't finishing seams back when I first started sewing, and I need to clean them up a bit. Having this serger is going to be such a godsend for the quality of my clothes! I can already see it from the couple of pieces that I've made. It actually makes me cringe to see some of my old finishing (or lack thereof).
Some of my dresses don't get enough wear, but mainly because they're more formal or for a night on the town (which I rarely do). I'm hoping they'll get some love during the summer when I'm going places and doing things. But it makes me realize I need more work-friendly dresses and casual options.
One last thing that I accomplished during the month of May, that doesn't affect my Me Made May status. I finally opened my Etsy shop! Right now it just has a few vintage patterns listed, but I'm hoping to add some other handmade items during the summer. I'll also be adding a lot more great patterns that I've picked up in my travels, but I just need to spend some time going through and checking the quality and completeness of each before I'm ready to list them. I'm hoping to get a few more listed this weekend.
Oh, and a lot of readers have been asking about my thoughts on my serger. I'll write a separate post about that soon! I've been using it a lot but still haven't run out of all of the pre-supplied thread. I figure that once that has run out, I can say that I've given it enough use to write a review of it. I'm halfway there so stay tuned!
