Sew: Made In May {MMM ’14 Completed Sewing Projects}

In my MMM pledge, I committed to finishing a project per week. Believe it or not I don’t blog everything I sew! Some things are too boring (taking up Mr Asks pants for example) or I want to refine something before I write a tutorial or review. Sometimes I just sew things and forget to blog them! I guess it gives you a real idea of what I get up to. Here’s my completed items for May. There were four and a bit weeks, I have eight finished items! How that happened? I’m not sure!

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I’ve been meaning to make this pattern for an age! I wasn’t looking forward to tracing all the pieces and all the basting involved. Once it was traced and cut out, it wasn’t too bad.

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I love this style and colour combo. I’m happy with this but I’ll have to add some depth to the cup next time. I haven’t quite worked that out in my head but I’m sure I’ll get it happening! When I get to that, I will post all about it.

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I have my fabulous Juanita Tortilla purse for storing my embroidery floss but I wanted to make a cute tote to carry my floss purse & current project. It had to be pretty so I can hang in in my lounge, ready to roll. I just love it!

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I am very new to embroidery! I decided to give it a go because my hand stitching is terrible. I thought it might help my hand sewing but also be a cool skill in it’s own right. I have a post about how I made this plus lots of tutorial links. 

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I finally got around to taking up Mr Asks pants! They only needed to come up the width of the hem, so I put my new hand sewing skills to the test. I’m pleased to say that I made a lovely job of it! Probably shouldn’t have left them sitting on the ironing board overnight, one of the cats seemed to find them comfy….

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I’ve had this refashion in mind for a while but I needed to find the right jumper/sweater (I read so many blogs from around the world that I use both terms, interchangeably). I had a lucky day in the op shop and thrifted this black sweater and added the lace back. If you want to make your own, I have this tutorial for you!

 

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This skirt almost never happened! I love this vintage barkcloth I picked up at the Brighton Market but I got it home and found it had many pin holes and a few stains. So I used it as a (hopefully) wearable muslin for this skirt. The seams were sewn and the zipper was in before I realized my careful cutting wasn’t carefully enough. Yep, holes and stains at centre front! It was also too big, so it went to my UFO pile and there it stayed for almost exactly a year.

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The original skirt was very high waisted, I yanked it down and realized that if I shortened it, the stain and holes would be chopped off. Also it would fit without needing to be taken in. So I did just that! I also adjusted the seams a little, used bias to face the waist and gave it a double turned hem. Voila! A funky new skirt in no time!

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This cutie was one of those spur of the moment, whip it up in an afternoon, creative frenzy deals. It was a project that I had been thinking about for a while but instead of buying the fabrics I had in mind, I hunted my stash and came up with this. I’m super happy with it and I’ll be blogging the ‘how to’ soon!

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I am quite surprised on how much I have been enjoying these simple embroidery projects! I have no special plan for this embroidery, I just made it for the enjoyment of creating something. I think it might be nice to have a few embroidered things on hand to work into other projects. I’ve created a section in my UFO box to store them.

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I’m not sure that this month was a typical month, in terms of how much sewing I got through! How much I get done is really dependent on how much time I have and how inspired I am. I’m thrilled about getting so much finished and having a few new things to wear!

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Check out my month of MMM outfits here!