Day 1: heading to work to give a presentation to trade commissioners from Italy, Spain, and the UK. Wearing: BurdaStyle dress. Rocked it! (Both the dress and the presentation.)

Day 2: going to work. Attending a special luncheon at which my friend and colleague Dana Lee was receiving a posthumous award for being awesome. Wearing: BurdaStyle blouse, me-made silver bird pendant, and RTW pencil skirt.

Day 3: Wearing my Patterns for Pirates Favourite Tee in grey bamboo french terry, Helen’s Closet Blackwood Cardigan in lightweight sweater knit, RTW jeans. Me-made necklace, too, if you can call stringing 3 painted wooden beads onto a chain a ‘me-made’.

Here’s another look at the T-shirt:

Day 4: road trip to South River, Ontario (3 hours’ drive north of Toronto) for a soundscape recording retreat. Wearing: Style Arc Lotti top layered over a RTW black long sleeve tee, with a Greenstyle Creations Capsule Cardigan in black sweater knit at the ready.

Here are a couple more views of the Lotti top. Stash buster! It uses very small pieces of fabric, and you can even use a woven on that bottom panel.

If you look carefully at the back vertical seam, you’ll notice I accidentally left in the selvedge/selvage on the black piece of fabric. You can see the holes in it! Lesson learned: don’t cut black fabric at night in low light!

And here’s a better pic of the Capsule Cardigan. It’s a very handy basic layering piece. (Just ignore that shade of pink that makes my camera blow a gasket.)

Day 5: Recording in the bush near South River, Ontario. There’s still a bit of snow on the ground and melting ice on the lakes around here, but the weather was sunny and pleasant. Wearing: Deer & Doe Plantain Tee and RTW jeans.

Here’s me pointing out the lack of traffic in downtown South River.

Day 6: I was up at 5:45 am to record the dawn chorus in the woods. A cosy sweatshirt was in order. I wore my new Basic Instinct T-shirt layered under my new McCall’s6792 colour-blocked batwing top. I shopped my stash for fabric for the batwing top, and used up some leftover black fleece sweatshirting and some leftover bright blue wool jersey (remains from my ill-fated Marty Feldman top). This was the only picture that was taken that day. This is the gang that participated in the soundscape recording retreat hosted by New Adventures in Sound Art.

Here’s a look at my version of the Basic Instinct T-shirt, a free pattern available from Sasha at Secondo Piano. I changed the neckline from the crew neck of the pattern to more of a scoop neck.

Day 7:  Wearing a brand new Santa Fe Top by Hey June Handmade. I bought some of this ikat-print jersey knit from Mood online a few years ago, and used it to make this top that was too big, and definitely not the right design for this busy print. It’s still sitting in my To Fix pile. So when I saw the same fabric again at Mood in LA when I was there a few months ago, I couldn’t resist buying more of it. It was like a chance to redeem myself. And I think I have! The Santa Fe top is perfect to show off this gorgeous fabric — no fussy design lines getting in the way. I’m going to wear this a LOT this summer. And I think I’m going to make a tunic-length version with pockets as well.

Some thoughts on Me Made May so far:

• I have almost no me-made bottoms (only one pair of pants that aren’t track pants or impractical satin joggers). I’m contemplating whether I want to sew more pants or not. I’m not necessarily aiming to have a completely handmade wardrobe; I’m good with mixing my own pieces with Ready-to-Wear. Should I focus my sewing on bottoms for a while? Still weighing my options on that.
• My recent focus on sewing mainly with solid coloured fabric has really helped with the versatility of my handmade wardrobe. It only took me 5 years of serious garment sewing for me to figure this out!

Thanks for stopping by!

— Lori