A me-made-May retrospective

Yep, I know – May was a while ago now. Turns out I have quite a few posts I haven’t managed to find the time to write yet! June tends to be a bit crazy, with Indie Pattern Month on the go. (Plus, I may have been working on the next Muse pattern – got it sent away to be digitised yesterday, yippie! So now I’m taking a breather from it to play with other things. Like this blog. And some knitting. And sewing something, just for me. Yay!)

Anyway, it turns out I took part in me-made-May again. I didn’t really do a pledge thing this time – my wardrobe choices are quite limited due to the littliest guy, plus I wear mainly me-made anyway. Instead, I did a little secret pledge just-to-myself to take a photo each day of my outfit. Pretty much just out of curiousity, so I can document it to look back on in about a year when I’m back to wearing the full range of my wardrobe again. For me, that’s proven to be one of the most interesting things about taking part in me-made-May – having the ability to go back and see what my day-to-day style was in previous years.

So, here we go – my outfits during May 2015! (Be prepared for a lot of button-up dresses and cardigans. They’re basically my uniform these days. Hah!)

1 May – brown linen Melissa dress, Hetty cardigan.
2 May – Gumnut Babies Wenona dress (first outing for the Wenona dress – yay!), grape Coppelia cardi (not shown, but you’ll see it later in the month). Worn to Fabric-a-brac, where the lovely Mel and I shared a table and had lots of fun.
3 May – 70’s floral wrap skirt, grape Coppelia cardi. An unusually empty space of wall – photo taken while we were rearranging furniture to fit my new Large Format Printer (eeek! Yeahh!!) into my sewing room (woo hoo!!!)
4 May – Birds of a Feather 1940’s dress, Miette cardigan. The first photo of many taken in the mirror of the “gym” (aka table tennis room) at work.

5 May – Loganberry Coppelia wrap dress, me-made cardigan. And part of our hall way.
6 May – Beatrice 1950’s dress, cat lady Jenna cardi. And part of my bedroom haha.
7 May – Rock-a-Birdy Bleuet, Strawberry Coppelia.
8 May – Hungry Caterpillar skirt, Southern Plaid tshirt, knitted-by-my-mother chunky grey cardi.

9 May – Hummingbirds and Clover dress, Miette cardigan. First family trip with the littliest guy! We went down to Dunedin for a long weekend to visit my family. This photo was taken outside my parents place in Evansdale.
10 May – Melissa dress, Hetty cardigan. Plus my mother, nana, and the littliest guy. Mothers day! We went out for coffee and cake at the cafe in the Dunedin Botanic Gardens (along with my grandad, who took the photo). I don’t get to see my grandparents nearly often enough, so it was lovely to spend some time sitting and chatting with them. (Also, moments like this remind me that yes, I am tall. Hah! I tend to forget until I see photographic evidance.)
11 May – Hummingbirds and Clover dress and Hetty cardigan. Not photographed, because they’re on a memory card in a different camera and I can’t be bothered finding it. Sorry, not sorry. Anyway, Steve and I left the kids with my parents and went to visit Larnach Castle, and have high tea! And one of these days I’ll get around to writing a post about that, so you’ll get to see the outfit then, if you’re particularly interested.
12 May – Mellow Yellow La Sylphide dress, Miette cardigan. (Duffle coat from Max. I wore my snails Rigel bomber pretty much every day for the first week and a half of May, then it needed a wash. It’s still in my ironing pile. Ahem.) Flew back to Wellington today – photo was taken while waiting for our luggage to come out. Note to self: evening flights with small people are Not A Good Idea.
13 May – Birds of a Feather 1940’s dress, knitted-by-my-mother 1940’s cardigan. And my socks, since I’d just put the Little Guy to bed. Plus part of our constantly-messy lounge.

14 May – Hungry Caterpillar skirt, purple merino fitted tee, Bird Heart Bonnie sweater. Back to work, yes indeed.
15 May – vintage 1970’s dress (not me made! Note to self: must do ironing more often. Coz I had run out of things to wear, whoops!), black merino Jenna cardi (not blogged – was one of the samples I made when creating the pattern).
16 May – Pigeon skirt, made-by-my-mother 1940’s cardigan. And the outdoor bath at Sandra’s place, when we went for her housewarming. Sunset, hence the odd sky colour.
17 May – Mellow Yellow La Sylphide, Marion cardigan.

18 May – floral Dakota dress, nursing singlet (not me-made), striped Jenna cardi (made by my sister).
19 May – Gothic Mystery 1950’s dress (it’s first outing! Exciting!), cat lady Jenna cardi.
20 May – Mellow Yellow La Sylphide, Miette cardi.
21 May – Beatrice 1950’s dress, Marion cardi.

22 May – floral Dakota dress, nursing singlet (not me-made), Hetty cardigan. Pink day at work, to raise awareness for the annual anti-bullying campaign! Yep, that’s raspberry Foxton Fizz, and a cupcake holder filled with salted caramel popcorn. Yum!
23 May – Gothic Mystery dress, Jenna cardi (again, an unblogged one. It was another sample made while creating the pattern.) High Tea at The Little Teapot cafe in Kilbirnie with the Wellington Sewing Bloggers Network girls and our special guest – Penny from Dresses & Me! Yay!! So much fun!!! 🙂
24 May – Gumnut Babies Wenona dress, brown merino me-made cardi. And part of my sewing/work room (which doubles as a guest room).
25 May – All Buttoned Up 1940’s dress, 1940’s cardigan knitted by my mother. Again, photo taken after putting kids to bed, so in my socks. Hah.
26 May – forgot to take a photo. Ugh. Anyway, wore my Rock-a-Birdie Bleuet dress with the grape Coppelia cardi. Both of which you’ve seen here before in this round up.

27 May – Gumnut Babies Wenona dress, Miette cardigan. And a hotel room! My first night away from the Littliest Guy, and my first decent nights sleep in over a year. (Ugh.) Went to the Customer 3.1 conference in Auckland. Presented at it, too. Twice in fact – I couldn’t decide on a topic, so did both. Hah. And yes, I wore a dress covered in gumnut babies to present at a conference. Coz that’s how I roll.
28 May – 1940’s dress, crazy cat lady cardigan. And a lift at the Pullman hotel where I was staying. Day 2 of the conference.
29 May – Melissa dress, wrap-around cardi knitted by my mother.
30 May – Rock-a-birdie Bleuet dress, wrap-around cardi knitted by my mother.

31 May – Birds of a Feather 1940’s dress, Marion cardi. The last day! Woot! No more selfies, thankfully!!!

So yep, there we have it. A month in outfits.

Lots of dresses, lots of cardigans. Lots of knee high boots and long socks or tights, because it was rapidly heading into winter and I get cold easily. Hence also why hand-knitted cardians featured a lot.

I love dresses. So easy in the morning – just need to throw a cardi on over the top, no need to find other things to match. Also easy at this stage in my life, when I’m losing the last bit of post-baby tummy, which means skirts and trousers don’t fit very well. (Yes, I do actually own some trousers. They don’t get worn much. If at all.)

Somewhat embarrasing fact: I actually have several dresses that I can and do wear at the moment that didn’t feature this month. The reason why? They were too far down my ironing pile/mountain and didn’t make it to the top. *hands head in shame* Yeah, full time job and two small kids – ironing doesn’t happen often enough. Let’s face it – I’d rather be sewing. 😉