A Me Made May Roundup

Me Made May has wrapped up for the year and personally I am calling it a big success. Consciousness was raised!I I really loved participating in it, but more than that I loved sticky-beaking at other peoples wardrobes via the ever wonderful instagram hastags #mmmay15 and #memademay. Totally inspiring - and showing that handmade can easily be everyday. 

I wrote about my participation in Me Made May in this post. My pledge was simply to wear handmade everyday; as I wear homemade nearly everyday anyway I didn't think it was going to be any big deal. And really it wasn't. I took it a tiny step further, in that I aimed to wear my whole handmade wardrobe. I didn't quite wear everything as there were a few summer things that weren't weather appropriate but I tried. I didn't have a total repeat until Day 23 - which means that I was right in my post the other day when I talked about the idea of "enough". I'm there*. 

The thing was, I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to get out of it. I hoped for some awareness on what I really liked and didn't like in my wardrobe. And then maybe a little more consciousness around what I already had and more specifically, some consciousness around what I had, but didn't like. What I clarified is that over the last 2/3/4 years I have slowly but surely developed a wardrobe I really love. A handmade wardrobe that I wear nearly everyday without thinking about it. That fits my life and makes me feel good. 

Day 1 through to Day 9.

That said I also discovered a few other things

1. I have few things I don't like and therefore don't wear. For each the things I don't like there is a very simple fix - I've been being lazy. I'll get to them when I get home in July. 

2. I discovered there were some holes in my wardrobe, that became clearer through the wearing.

a. I have a huge jacket sized hole. When I return to Australia the Morris is going to be tackled and won, before my kids have recovered from their jetlag*. 

b. I love frocks. Love them. Just peruse my pinterest board and you will find a wealth of frocks. In reality I only have two that I own and wear. Fixing this hole is my sewing goal over the next year or so. I aim to hunt down and perfect some frock patterns that fit and make me feel the joy. I have two ready-to-wear frocks I love, so I am thinking I might be doing some copying, in terms of size, shape and fit. I know I have been avoiding this as it seems easier to just bang out a top than to make a frock. This is a declaration of intent lovely people!!!

c. Some of my clothes are getting a little thin - like my favourite Liberty tank dress - and will need to be replaced over the next year. 

Day 10 through Day 21.

3. I also discovered something (quite liberating) about my handmade wardrobe limits!
When I was looking at the "bottoms" section of my wardrobe I realised that I had only one or two handmade garments and they annoyed me.  I am a classic pear with a set of rounded saddlebag bits on my outer thighs. That make pants/skirts trickier to fit and so I would much rather be able to try the thing on as a finished garment. The idea of fiddling with a pattern to get something to fit without being even 20% sure I would get something wearable at the end is not at all appealing. My heart feels constricted at the mere idea of looking for a pattern.

So my realisation?? - That in making my handmade wardrobe I do not want to make pants or even really skirts. In the future I might have the brainspace but I currently don't have it in me to fiddle with the fit. And so I am just going to cross that whole category off my sewing list. Letting go = happy days. 

Day 22 through Day 31

All details for all patterns etc are on instagram. If you don't have an instagram account then go to http://instagram.com/thecraftsessions - just click on the individual photos for the details. 

I'd love to hear what you learned, and what you loved, from this year's Me Made May.

Felicia x

*Last time it took those little tigers 6 nights. SIX nights before they were sleeping between the hours of 12pm and 4am. This time I might need to resort to herbal sleeping remedies?

I Made This - Anna Maltz

I Made This is a weekly blog series that features makers from around the world and aims to talk about the things we are proud of; of the objects we make that have meaning to us and the journey we take to make them.

This week's amazing guest is Anna Maltz from the UK. I first came across her on instagram and if you don't follow her already you really should. She has an eye for sweaters and I find her feed inspiring in a think-outside-the-box kind of way. And I love that! And her project today is a perfect example of that - one-of-a-kind genius.... and so with that, I'll hand over to Anna.

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This is the dress I wear when I teach knitting classes – it simplifies the dilemma of what to wear and puts my money where my mouth is. It’s an odd uniform in that there isn’t anything uniform about it. Each sleeve is different, ‘cause why not? In fact, I knitted it for myself in 2013 as a reward and respite from knitting the same handful of accessory patterns I had designed and used to teach the 25 amazing women with whom I formed Ricefield Collective. http://ricefieldcollective.org/.

Though I am often asked, there isn’t a pattern for this dress and there won’t be. I made it up as I went along. I say ‘often’, but not as frequently as people point out that knitting colourwork in cotton (which has less stretch than wool therefore requiring more tension regulating on the part of the knitter) is the preserve of wizards, crazy people and the anally retentive (cheers). The luxury of this dress was to make a one-off thing for me. An interlude from the responsibility of planning and keeping track that is necessary when preparing a pattern to be published.

I did do a little maths before I started. The body is 260 stitches round, which, beyond fitting me, divides by 4, 5 and 10. By decreasing 1 to 259, it’s divisible by 7. By adding 1 to make 261, it becomes divisible by 9. By decreasing 2, to 258, it divides by 6. By adding 4 or decreasing 4, it is divisible by 8. Using a number like that allowed me the flexibility to insert all sorts of patterns as the mood took me. It reduced the need for advance planning, because chances were, I could make whatever motif I fancied fit. The same went for the yoke: I used 384 stitches, because that is divisible by 4 and 6 and is 1 away from a multiple of 5 – you get the idea.

Knitting in the round avoids needing to sew anything together or do colourwork from the purl side, both of which I am not overly fond of. It’s worked from the bottom up, because I prefer decreases for yoke shaping  (as opposed to increases which you use when working from the top down). I made up a cast on involving 2 colours. I was on a 12hour flight from Manila to London and wanted to get cracking without access to how-too videos or my extensive library of knitting books. It wasn’t totally what I’d imagined, but it was something else good. I cast on 520sts - double the number I wanted for the body of the dress. I thought that would be enough stitches to create a big ruffle at the bottom. It wasn’t, there’s just a little flurry. Quadrupling the stitches would mean each round taking an obscenely long time to knit – well over an hour, so I won’t be casting that on any time soon.  

Shaping? There isn’t any. Why add a whole other layer of calculations and risks? Looking at the majority of amazing coloured and patterned clothing from around the world – saris, sarongs, huipiles, dashiki, kobo blankets, you name it; they are basically right-angled shapes with minimal sewing, often even using uncut lengths of cloth. The pattern is the focus. Enough shape comes from being draped on a body. If I feel the need to prove I have a waist, I put on a belt.  

The 4ply/fingering weight cotton came from my stash and my mother’s (so potentially also my grandmother’s). Between us we have so many nice crafting ingredients, I try not to buy more. When I design, I have to use current colours and yarns, which means my personal stash really languishes. It was an extra treat to work from it. Since it felt like I was winging it with no pattern or plan and therefore no guarantee of success, I picked my least favourite colours: ones I wanted to use up first. It’s scary committing your favourites to a project – once used they lose all their amazing potential which is a big part of their beauty. The funny thing is, I really like how it came out. The palette has now been working its way into other parts of my wardrobe and life.

Anna's new pattern Solja for kids and Solja for adults.

Projects like this are so important for me – they are experimental playtime, all about practice and learning. Who knows where they lead. In this case the floral yoke became the yoke of my Solja sweater, first published in PomPom Quarterly magazine http://www.pompommag.com/ last year. And now I’ve added kids sizes too  http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/mini-solja

Why we dress how we dress.

I'm reading Women in Clothes. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend you do at some stage.

I saw it doing the rounds of instagram a few months ago and couldn't for the life of me understand how the topic could be interesting enough to warrant the raving reviews, and it's sheer size. On a whim I purchased it, and have been joyfully dipping in and out for two months now. It sits on our dining room table and I peruse it while having my mid-morning coffee.

The premise is that three women, Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton, sent a questionnaire to 639 women asking them a list of more than fifty questions about their personal style.

“It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities - famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old - on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives.”

— from the cover of Women in Clothes

This book is totally inspiring. On more than one occasion it has taken my breath away with that feeling of recognition you get when something rings totally true. 

Here is just one of those quotes.  

“I hate it when people say they don’t care about clothes, because it’s a lie. It’s like when writers say they don’t care about plot. Lie. We are always asking for something when we get dressed. Asking to be loved, to be fucked, to be admired, to be left alone, to make people laugh, to scare people, to look wealthy, to say I’m poor, I love myself. It’s the quiet poem in the waiting room , on the subway, in the movie of our lives. It’s a big fucking deal. ”

— Leopoldina Core in Women in Clothes

I'd love to hear your take on this... The quote might strike you as it did me - or maybe you just think it's total rubbish. 

For me - I realised that after having my kids I've often dressed to hide. Hide the fact that I didn't quite feel like me. Hide the fact that I weighed more than I did and that my body had changed. Sometimes dressing as an unconcious way of conveying my exhaustion. Dressing to be invisible so I didn't have to chat because I didn't have the energy. The whole nursing top and baggy pant stage. It's almost like me as a person disappeared into the mothering and that was reflected in what I wore. Not everyday but often enough.

And there was another thing. It was almost like when I came out the other side of the early days I wasn't sure who I was, and that was reflected in my dress. I wasn't the same person - the pre-motherhood, working in pencil skirts and heels, jeans and tshirts on the weekend kinda girl. And yet I was. Everything I put on felt wrong. Too slobby, too dressed up, too whatever .... and that felt awkward.

That awkward stage of dressing and mothering ended a few years ago but I'm not sure it's left me completely. As my kids are getting older I can feel things changing and I've recovered my idea of "self". Dragging it out from under the all-consuming getting-through-the-days of early parenting into something where I recognise me in me. My clothes are reflecting that - reflecting the fact that most days now I remember to have a shower and look in a mirror on my way out the door. That there is the brain space to engage in the self-care and self-love involved in dressing in a way that makes me feel good. And that in itself feels pretty good.

The quote made me think that maybe it is partly a chicken and egg situation. Maybe by consciously dressing to convey my me-ness I'm encouraging my me-ness to return. And around it goes? 

Any thoughts?

Felicia x

Putting The Love In

Sentimentality is a quality I share with my eldest kid. He loves hearing stories about when he was little and really struggles with the idea that he would throw anything out. Which makes him a total joy to make things for. He loves the idea I am making them, loves receiving them and then wears them until they fall apart. And even then doesn't want to throw them out. He recently gave up a pair of shorts I made for him when he was three. He is now almost 9. They are the calico-coloured shorts you see below with little frogs all over them. I think the only reason he didn't get grief about them in school is he had been wearing them since they were all so small they didn't "see" them anymore. By the end they were a little on the short side of shorts which didn't seem to bother him at all. He tore a hole in the bum though, so it was time.

Last week I decided I'd better finally stop my procrastination and make his quilt to try to get it done by his birthday this weekend. I was planning on having it made by the end of the year but I realised that what I was really doing was avoiding starting it because I wanted it to be "special". The old "if you don't start it you can't muck it up" chestnut. Classic perfectionism bu*@sh*t.

I'd been happy with the design for a good few months so there was no reason not to start. I also downsized my (crazy) expectations that his quilt would be hand quilted, and decided machine quilting was probably best for a kid that will drag it around the house, make cubbies out of it, and take it camping. 

So I cut! And I began to make it and I really love it so far. It is better than I thought it would be. You can see it's progress best on my instagram feed.

Getting the quilt ready to trim the binding.

Anyway the love. I had this idea many years ago that when I made him a quilt it would include fabric scraps from many of the shorts and shirts I had made him over the years. But as I don't really like the "patch" element of patchwork I was trying to figure out how to do it. I was going to put them on the back but that felt a little sad. Instead I've come up with the (hopefully) genius idea of doing a strip binding with the scraps. I was planning on using the super worn short fabric alongside the unused scrap fabric but when it came time to cut up the super-torn well-loved shorts I found I couldn't do it. 

Sentimental much? Yes! But if it's not about that, what is it about?? I love love the fact that he will be able to find fabrics he knows and loves in a small way in this quilt. Fabrics that will slowly fade, as did the shorts and shirts he has worn over the last few years until they are now soft and pale. 

Some lovely person on instagram pointed out that it was a quilt that he could have into adulthood without it feeling kid-like. And without the binding that was totally true. I'm hoping however that with the binding it will actually be a bit of both. A piece of his childhood he can take into his adulthood - if he wants to obviously. But I think he just might!

If you feel like it, I'd love to hear about how you put "the love" in your projects....

Felicia x

Around the Traps - Me Made May

Me Made May starts today my friends and for the first time I am going to join in.

A little blurb from So Zo,.....what do you know?'s blog goes as follows;

“Me-Made-May’15 is a challenge designed to encourage people who sew/knit/crochet/refashion/upcycle garments for themselves to actually wear and love them. The me-made and self-stitched challenges have been taking place for five years now and they work on both a personal and community level. The participants decide the specifics of their own challenge pledge, so that the month is appropriate and challenging for them (more on this below). For example, a very common pledge is for a participant to aim to wear one self-stitched or refashioned garment each day for the duration of May 2015. The participants can also choose to document their challenge with daily photos (though this is in no way compulsory for taking part) and share them with other participants (more on this below). ”

There are a lot more details on Zoe's website so go have a read - lots to think about!

My sewing and knitting have improved over time as has my ability to create the things that I really want to make. The thing that seems really important to me now, is not that I keep making and making and making for the sake of making, but rather that I spend time looking for the holes in my wardrobe and where I could improve it. Not by making lots of things but rather by making one or two and really loving them. There are some black holes in my wardrobe - where I need to make things but I haven't. And also some areas where I have made too many things and I don't wear them all. I stick to my favourites, y'know?

I wear homemade nearly every day but I kindof overlook the fact that the things that I truly love are things I've made myself. I still go out seeking the special in shops when I need a little pickmeup and sometimes I think I see my handmade as not quite as special. I'm actually shocking myself as I'm typing these words.... but I think it is true and that is what I think. How totally crazy is that! Eek!! 

My MMM pledge

I'm joining MMM as a consciousness raising exercise for myself. I will wear handmade everyday in May and will keep a visual record of what I wear (I may not get to post them everyday ;)). Thereby enabling me to better understand what I have, what I love and what I need. 

Are you planning on joining me this month? 

Felicia x

PS. For social media the hastag is #memademay.

PPS. I know that you definitely don't need to make anything for MMM, however Jenn just finally released the Morris Blazer for her Grainline label. I've been waiting for this for many years so I may just slip one in over the next few weeks. My only issue is that there is nothing in stash and Stash Less is still going strong. I'll give you an update next week hopefully.....