I'm participating in Me Made May 2015!

For the first time, this year I thought I would participate in Me Made May.

I'm going to keep it pretty low key, I hope to try and take a photo of my outfits every day, but am already expecting that they will all be blurry, so I'll save them all up to show you at the end of May.

My pledge is as follows:

I, Andrea of www.obsessivecreativeness.blogspot.com.au, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '15. I endeavour to wear at least two me-made garments each day for the duration of May 2015.

I have hesitated to participate in previous year, mainly because the weather in Sydney is so changeable during May. I have a stack more me-made clothes in my summer wardrobe than I do for winter, and it is usually getting quite chilly in May Last year, however, our summer weather decided to extend right up to the end of May, making me wonder why I hadn't signed up for Me-Made May.

So this year I decided to take the plunge. I have a few more winter clothes ready to go, and of course, I know I have a sufficient supply of bras to wear every day. I'm in! Who else is joining me?

UFO: Denim Shorts

If you get the feeling you've heard this story before, you wouldn't be entirely mistaken.

Here's something that I started years ago. On my design, I dated the top corner 23/6. They were meant to be maternity shorts, and seeing as the only time that I was pregnant in June was with my first born, that means that I've had this design hanging around unfinished for 9 1/2 years.

UFO: Stripy Summer Dress

In my blog hop post,I mentioned four projects that I wanted to focus on finishing. Here is the first of them.

My husband started making this dress for me about 7 years ago. Yes, you heard right, my husband was making this for me.

Let's back up a bit. When I was studying fashion design (whilst pregnant with our first child - there's nothing like being a mature age student who's pregnant!), my husband decided that he would try his hand at a bit of sewing. He refused all my offers of help, saying that he wanted to work it all out for himself. He made me a few maternity tops (which was quite helpful, as I was up to my elbows in morning sickness and studying). He's also made himself a few pairs of pants and a shirt. In some ways it backfired on him though, as I frequently turn him away when he requests that I mend something for him. I know he's perfectly capable of doing it himself!

Back to this dress though. He decided that he wanted to make me a dress, and, using a block that we had made together to my measurements, he drafted his own pattern for this dress, to his own design.

He was doing OK til it came to finishing off a V shaped waist panel, and there it has stayed for the last 6 or 7 years. Until now!

The Importance of Cutting Accurately on the Grain

Have you ever bought a pair of jeans that didn't seem to sit quite right? I recently bought a pair of jeans from Jeans West, hemmed them so I wasn't walking on them (why do they always make jeans so looooong?), and then realised that the left leg wasn't cut on the grain. They kept twisting around so that the inseam was almost running down the centre of my leg (not that it looks that bad in these photos, I put them on 5 minutes before I took them back, just to take photos).

Wow, my hips look huge in this photo!
And the coin pocket is sticking out!