Me-Made-May Making: Day One

It seems beyond foolish to start blogging again, but without a real home for sewing the way that my knitting has Ravelry this blog seems like the place to go to report on my life in sewn stitches. Since I last posted here, I have continued to make clothes for myself. Some skirts, another Rooibos dress, a couple of Emma tunics, two Taproot tunics, and even a pair of underwear. As summer approaches I am ready to fire up the machine more often and once again I have great expectations for myself over the coming months.

Today marks the start of Me-Made-May and I am not confident the number of handmade items in my closet will carry me through the month. I think if I can wear one or more items most days of the month with regular repeats I will come close to the basic concept of the concept. While today's dress wouldn't count, I did wear my dress from A Field Day with an unfortunate stain at nipple level that I rescued by using fabric from the pocket lining to create a breast pocket. I am sure to wear it again soon and will post a photo.

Instead of, or perhaps in addition to, wearing daily homegrown outfits I think I will pledge to work on sewing for myself in May. I can call it Making-for-Me-for-Next-Me-Made-May. My pledge is to devote 30 minutes a day for 31 days to working on making items for my wardrobe that come from items currently in my stash.

I have quite a few things in the works, all in various states of unfinished--half sewn, partially serged, cut out. Then there is the pile of alterations. Since my last burst of sewing I have lost weight so that pretty well-fitting skirt I made last summer is now safety pinned on until I screw up the courage to take off the waist band and alter the panels to fit better. I have been having a whack at cleaning up my sewing space, tossing things I will never use, and getting all my patterns in one place as well as creating a Pinterest board of what I have in my drawer of patterns in anticipation.

Today while daydreaming during my commute on this particularly warm Bay Area spring day I conjured up a Wiksten Tank Dress with shirring at the side waists and pockets. I dug up the adjusted pattern pieces and cut them out of muslin tonight (easily 30 minutes of clothes making, in addition to the Finn the Human hat that I sewed for my kid this evening). My plan:

1. Serge pieces.
2. Sew the pieces together.
3. Wash muslin (seems backward, but the Linda Maynard Craftsy class said not to wash muslin beforehand. However, I suspect she isn't expecting the muslin to turn into a wearable garment but I was too impatient to wash the fabric. If this strategy fails I will have lost about $2 worth of muslin).
4. Determine where the shirring goes. Shirr.
5. Dye the dress.