I wanted to make one more Strata top in cotton, and my girls were asking when I was going to make them something.
For years, I sewed exclusively for the kids, or else for our house (quilts, pillow shams, curtains, etc.) so it’s no wonder they were confused when I spent an entire month and a half sewing for myself.
During Me Made May, the Wiksten Shift was blowing up the internet. Well, you might rightly say, it wasn’t blowing up MY internet. And you would be right. But I follow a few fellow sewists on social media, and everyone was making and wearing this new pattern in May. And raving, raving, raving about it.
One of Meg McElwee’s patterns, I made my Metamorphic dresses during Me Made May. I liked the idea of making a reversible dress – I would get two dresses out of one make. I knew that it might be a bit of a challenge with its curved hem and lined bodice. As it turns out, two dresses means twice as much work.
For my first attempt at making pants for myself, I made Arenite Pants from Meg of Sew Liberated. The pants have a ton of ease and lots of options in terms of style and fabric choice, so the five pairs I made from the same pattern and size feel very different from each other.
I found Meg McElwee of Sew Liberated, through Rae, another sewing, pattern-making blogger. I loved Meg’s artsy aesthetic and layered style. I purchased a couple of her PDF patterns over a year ago, but I never printed them out to use them.
Fast forward to this spring – two years since I made anything meaningful. I’d just committed to taking a fast from buying RTW (ready-to-wear) clothes.
Last year’s #memademay felt like a total flop for me, but this year as May swung around I thought to myself, I’m going to start with May 1 and just stop when I run out of handmades to wear. No pressure.
I knew I didn’t have enough clothes to wear something I’d made every day of the month. I was cool with that. As though permission to fail was all I needed, I started sewing again. I got two more patterns from Sew Liberated, and ordered a ton of fabric.
