Made by Me Week 3

Yes I'm posting these both on the same day.  I didn't want one long post with both weeks.  So here we are with week 3.  The style prompts are from my friends at Style Sisters on Facebook.  Combining my two current passions- sewing and improving my style.

Sunday, style prompt- Show us a new item.  Okay, no picture.  I was sick this Sunday.  I know I was wearing something me made as most of my lounge and pjs are me made.  No pic though.

Monday, style prompt- Favorite warm weather completer piece.  Mine is this ladder necklace I bought for the GYPO Summer Style Challenge in 2014.  I hemmed and hawed since I rarely wear necklaces and was still nursing a munchkin who pulled on anything that he could grab.  I'm so glad I went ahead and bought it.  Mine is a copy cat from Zulily that has held up beautifully.  Here I'm wearing it with a long sleeve store bought t-shirt, my green Swoon cardigan and jeans.  Don't let the sunshine fool you, it was cold.

Tuesday, style prompt- Favorite Skirt.  This jean skirt was a recent- long looked for- purchase from Goodwill.  I've been searching for a jean skirt for a few years, everywhere!  Got lucky last month at Goodwill.  I paired it with my modified Day Tripper top, wool tights and rainboots!  It was a record month for rainfall.  

Wednesday, style prompt- Pattern or Favorite shoes.  Well I can safely say these are my favorite shoes.  They are shearling lined slippers from LLBean.  I'm pretty sure I spent this day in bed still recovering.  Ugh.  I am wearing a Hey June Halifax and heavily modified Sis Boom Judy sweatpants.  

Thursday, style prompt- Leapin' Leopard!  Okay, I was finally feeling better so I went all out.  I'm wearing the leopard top I made for my capsule (Ottobre pattern) with my favorite leopard Bobs and fun leopard watch.  Bright pink cardigan to call the Spring.  

Friday, style prompt- Graphic Tee.  This tank is an up cycled t-shirt using a pattern from my trusty Ottobre magazines.  

Saturday, style prompt- Feelin' the Blues, wear denim.  Rain, rain go away!!!  Its never ending.  I managed to get out to take a picture most days during the break.  No luck on Saturday.  While you can't see it well I am wearing jeans.  I topped them with an Ottobre t-shirt from the awesome sewing collage fabric and panel from Affordable Fabrics (a little bit of a misnomer!).  I think I may need to budget some $$ for another panel, I love it.  

Woo Hoo!  A week and a half to go.  I'm definitely going to be spending time culling my closet after this experience.  I want more Me Made and some days I struggled to reach for them.

Made by Me Week 2

I have been struggling with the outfits.  Partly the weather and partly uninspired by my wardrobe.  I have to really look at that here shortly.  I think its partly a seasonal thing- I need a Spring wardrobe that works better.  Oh well.  Here we go.

Week 2-
Sunday, style prompt: Mother's day outfit.  On the left, Greenstyle Katie Peplum for church and rainy morning.  Changed into Target tee (that needs replacing) and denim Colette Iris Shorts.

Monday, style prompt- Print Top or Check it out Gingham.  Love this Sis Boom Patricia Top I made a few years ago.  Its such a great light-weight voile.  The picture though reminds me I need to wear it with a slippery cami.  

Tuesday, style prompt- Striped Dress.  So I ventured a little off here since I rarely wear dresses.  I did go with stripes, a lightweight Greenstyle Lacey Slope Tee.  

Wednesday, style prompt- copy cat an outfit.  I did copy cat this from pinterest but of course cannot find the pin.  I'll have to add it later.  The t-shirt is from Ottobre 2/11.  

Thursday, style prompt- denim vest or jacket.  The striped shirt is from Ottobre.  

Friday, style prompt- wear something you haven't worn in a while.  This Sis Boom Tortola top is the first I made.  I don't think I wore it at all last summer.  Truthfully as much as I like the fabric something pulls across the back funny.  I will need to replace it.  

Saturday, style prompt- favorite casual wear.  This look is so my weekend- well any day- wear.  The top is a copy cat from my favorite Ann Taylor top.  I wore the blue one last week and blogged about it back in October for my Walking Dead post.  

And thats week 2.

Bring on Summer!

In  keeping with my running theme of BRING ON SUMMER, I decided to join some friends in a little Shorts & Capris Blog Tour hosted by Ti, over at Sewing by Ti.  If you've never checked out her blog, you're missing out.  Tons of great sewing info, pattern reviews and sewing inspiration.  Anyway, I agreed to do a pair of shorts for the tour. Yeah!

Well as it turns out though, I don't need any shorts.  Weird.  I pulled out all my summer shorts to get an idea of what I wanted to make.  Turns out I have more than 7 pairs of made by me shorts all from one pattern!  Added to that are about 2 pair of Jean shorts (rtw), a random pair of gray bermuda shorts (also rtw) and a pair of wide leg shorts from the Jocole pattern.  Even at my laziness- you know only doing laundry when you have no clothes to wear- I don't think I need more shorts, 11 might be enough.   Oh and lets not mention the pair I have cut out from last summer that I never sewed up.  Oops.  

So instead of sewing up a new pair I thought I'd just show off my 7 pair of shorts from my absolute favorite shorts pattern the Colette Iris.  I fit them a few years ago and have just continued to add shorts from the pattern to where I now have 7 pair!  The slide show is missing the khaki pair and I think one other pair, I'd have to check.  I'll be adding a red pair this year since they are cut and ready to sew up.

Seriously, I'm not sure I can say how much I love this pattern.  I've made changes, style wise, such as omitting the pockets, moving the pockets, adding pocket stays, lengthening them (the mint pair below), and notably I generally sew the zipper in the back seam instead of the side so that I could, in theory take them in when needed.  In reality, I'll likely just sew new ones in a smaller size!

I'll do a quick review and show off the changes I ended up making for this pattern.  It really is a quick sew.  Now with no elastic, fitting must be done.  You will need to make a muslin.  This pair (picture was taken on an iPad during when were in the process of a transoceanic move!) was my first muslin.  The big thing that came from this muslin is that I found the pattern runs large.  I cut a 14 based on my hip (my waist does not fit this pattern as its in a size 20 for Colette).  After sizing down, I actually made only minor changes to the first few pairs after this one.  All are wearable except the first as it was too big, the fabric loosen up too much with wearing on top of it and well, we were moving so seam ripping and re-sewing just wasn't happening!  

This white pair was probably the second.  As you can see I have some nice pulling heading into an area you just don't want highlighted.  They are a combo of need a little more full butt room and having a sway back.   

Now onto my adjustments:

               - swayback 

               - full butt

               - full belly

               - moving zipper to center back

               - pocket stays

               - adding length to short shorts

You may not need all of these- which should make the shorts even better for you!  If you do, they are super easy to do.  

First the sway back- this is actually a fairly standard adjustment for me on all fitted garments.  On fitted shorts and pants it really amounts to using a smaller waist band than the pattern size I'm using.  I measure my waist along the back only from side seam to side seam and then double that measurement to find out what waistband I should use for the back only.  I will also deepen the darts to accommodate the smaller waist band.  This works about 80% of the time with no issues.  It worked perfectly with this pattern.  Now the other 20% of the time I end up having to shape the waistband into this wacky looking trapezoid.  

Now the full butt- super easy adjustment.  I went ahead and pulled out my tracings to show you what I did.  First I started by scooping out the crotch curve.  You can see the red line is the size 12 crotch line.  Mine goes down farther.  Now the triangle that is inserted there is actually a subsequent adjustment.  I did that after the white pair.  

I also added to the top of the center back seam to lengthen the seam just a touch more.  You can also see how the curve is scooped out a little up here too.  

Fully Belly adjustment is probably the easiest.  I simply started curved the front crotch seam out to halfway between the size 14 and 16.  I may have started with more but thats where it ended up.  

No picture of moving the zipper, the seam allowances on the Iris make it an easy thing to do.  I did have to cut the back waistband in half and add seam allowances to the center.  

Pocket stays are so necessary for me in general.  I find that they give just a little support to the belly plus my pockets don't pop open so much when I use them.  I essentially followed this tutorial on the Curvy Collective.  Because the pockets on these shorts sit right on the edge of my full belly they do still pop open a bit.  Not as much as they did before I started using the stays though.  

Lastly I lengthened the regular style of these shorts by just tracing to the 18 length.  I found them just a tad too short at the drafted length.  I did find that the length created a funny pool of fabric right in the front under my belly.  To correct, I angled the inside leg seams on the front pattern pieces only, that fixed the issue for me.  

With that I can tell you I will sew many, many more pairs of these shorts in my lifetime!  Maybe not this year though- other than the red pair that is.  Now go, sew your own, you'll love them.  

Since I know you still need more inspiration, check out the other stops on this tour:

Summer Sewing, The Long and the Short Of It

Sewing By Ti

Creative Counselor

Gray All Day

MSL Creations

Sew Sophie Lynn

The Socially Awkward Seamstress

Week 1 of Made by Me May

Made by Me May is so fun to watch and track as I've been doing for the past few years.  Every year when it rolls around I think, next year I'll do it.  Next year I'll be ready.  It can't be that hard, right?
Well next year finally rolled around- about 2 or 3 years later- with a little push from Katie over at Creative Counselor.  She mentioned it on the Capsule Wardrobe Facebook page.  I decided this would be the year!  Of course, if you actually scroll through the comments on the MMMay page, I didn't actually make a pledge there.  oops.  I'll do it now.

"I, Maria from MSL Creations, sign up as a participant in Made-by-Me May '16.  I endeavor to wear an article of clothing made by me each day for the duration of May 2016."

Uhm... doesn't seem to hard.  I have quite an extensive collection of made by me pieces in my wardrobe.  I wanted this to be a little challenging but not overwhelming so I figured that I would incorporate my made by me pieces with the style prompts from my other Facebook haunt Style Sisters.  That group was formed by former challengers in the GYPO Style Challenges.  These challenges are really fantastic.  I decided, though, after the Winter Challenge that I needed to take a break.  The colors and styles weren't as inspiring as they had been at the beginning when I was still trying to get out of my frumpy rut.  Anyway with the Style Sisters in mind I added this addendum to my challenge:

I will also follow the prompts from Style Sisters in my Made-by-Me May challenge.  

Again, really, how hard could that be?  Yep, laugh now.  It actually turned out to be more challenging than I thought- mostly due to the fact that Winter is just not wanting to loosen its grip!  Well I guess thats Spring here- one day 70 the next 50 and raining.  So fun.  Well without further talkie-talkie, here is Week 1.  

Sunday, May 1st, Okay, now I did not decide to work with the prompts until May 2, so this was my own thing.  Comfy for Sunday.  All from Ottobre magazine. 

Monday, May 2, style prompt- stripes, something nautical.  Now not so much on target but I am wearing stripes.  These are the Seamwork Moji pants- my muslin for a day at home.  

Tuesday, May 3, style prompt- Spring Blazer, the t-shirt is a made by me from Ottobre

Wednesday, May 4, style prompt- build an outfit around a favorite necklace.  I'll admit I didn't actually build the outfit around the necklace but the necklace is a favorite.  Tee shirt is Ottobre, pants are modified Sis Boom Judy.  

 May 5, style prompt- show us a Bargain outfit, here I have my $3 sweater with my $1.50 scarf and Jalie Jeans I made from $3 fabric.

May 6, style prompt- Run for the Roses, Red and pinks.  I, of course, read Roses.  I only had summer roses- as in sleeveless- so I whipped up (sorry Sam) this Hey June Halifax up for the day.  Love it.  

May 7, style prompt- show a Date Night outfit.  Now hubby and I did not go on a date night tonight so this outfit is the one I made for a rehearsal dinner we went to last month.  Its a heavy modified version of Simplicity 1142.  I actually wore it with gold flat sandals, which was a godsend as we walked quite a bit that night.

For the Made by Me challenge though I couldn't not wear handmade so I pulled out the blue shirt I made for my Walking Dead Sew the Show post back in October.  Really love this shirt and so far the hole hasn't grown.  This pic is from then, I didn't take a pic today.  I wore it with boyfriend jeans, a pink tank and leopard flats.

So that wraps up week 1.  I'm hoping to be better with the style prompts this week- some were a bit of a stretch, no?  Anyway here's to next week!!