A New Top and Me Made May

This tee shirt is Burdastyle 126 from February of 2013. It's my March contribution for my Make a Garment a Month challenge.

I really did have it done by March 31, but I haven't had a chance to grab a photo. It's been raining on the Central Coast - yahoo! It's not enough to turn around our current drought, but my garden is looking much happier and when the sun comes out everything is so bright and fresh and sparkling - just what Spring should look like. It does make fashion shoots more challenging though.

Let's try a close-up so you can see the sleeve detail a bit better:

Hmm. Not that much better, huh? This is a raglan sleeve tee shirt. The sleeves are gathered in the front and back before you attach them to the body of the shirt. I think it gives an otherwise plain tee shirt a bit of va-va-voom. Too bad the design details are overpowered by the pattern on my fabric. Though I do like the fabric a lot. It's very soft and comfy and seems to have great recovery. I grabbed it on my knit-buying extravaganza at Backstitch in Nevada City. I got a giant piece for $10 - enough left for a dress or a couple more tee shirts at least.

I'm wearing it along with another pair of pants (a.k.a. trousers) made from Burdastyle 127a from October, 2013. I've been wearing my first version so often I figured I could use a back-up. I altered the pattern to use a cut-on fly rather than separate pattern pieces. It made inserting the fly a lot easier, but I can't say my results are much better. The inside still looks pretty messy at the bottom of the zipper, and, despite diligently ironing on interfacing, my fly shield stretched out towards the top, causing a sad pooch right below the button. I don't normally wear my shirts tucked in with these pants though, so I'm not stressing about it too much. Otherwise I really like the fit of this pattern. The legs are narrow but not tight and the pockets are just the right size.

Zip pooch on display. More zipper practice will make perfect, I hope

In other news, I'm going to be hopping in the pool for Me Made May this year.

Back when I first retired and friends and family would ask me what I was going to do, I'd say that I wanted to sew all my clothes. They'd mumble, "How...interesting," give me the side-eye, edge back a few steps and in other ways indicate that they questioned my sanity.

About that time I stumbled on Zoe's blog, where she was hosting one of the early Me Made Mays. I had a fabulous time following along with her daily documentation of her efforts and followed links to other people who thought sewing your own clothes wasn't crazy at all. I fell down the internet rabbit hole of sewing where I've been happily wallowing ever since.

By now I've come pretty far in my quest to make my entire wardrobe, so to kick up my challenge a notch, I, Nancy D, will attempt to wear nothing but me-made items for the month of May. Excepting underwear and shoes. Though I do want to try the Bambi Soft Bra from Ohhh Lulu. And I have a pile of knit scraps that would make excellent undies. I was wondering aloud a while back about how I could make my own shoes and my son said, "Mom! Stop it! You're scaring me!" Do you think cobbling is taking it too far?

My review of the tee pattern is here on PatternReview.com