Oh hey,"Me Made May"

on the only TWO dresses I've ever made!

For context: I am new to the online sewing community and all of its phrases and traditions and hashtags and themes!

Apparently, there is a theme called “Me Made May,” where sewists share clothing that they made themselves and share inspiration, which is super cool!

I am very new to sewing, and haven’t really entered the world of apparel sewing, yet. It seems fussy, precise, math-based, and I am intimidated by being able to make something strong enough to…put on your moving body?

It seems so vulnerable to WEAR your art?!!

To potentially SPILL KETCHUP on something that took you 26 hours to make??

Yeeeeesh. I truly, truly hope I can eventually get comfortable enough with sewing that making a functional piece of clothing doesn’t make me so anxious!

My rough intro into sewing clothes:
My mother is a pretty solid seamstress. She made our jumpers and matching Easter outfits when we were growing up. My mom is from the generation who just inherently knows how to sew, mend, make a buttonhole, use a pattern, etc. She seems so casual about her abilities, like she just absorbed them never had to struggle to learn them, they were just part of lady life. She tried to pass her sewing skills on to me when I was growing up, and I was NOT interested, at all! There was something about the precision, the measuring, the use of 1/4th inches, the sharp pins and little knots and all of it that just felt stuffy and not the vibe. The world of sewing felt dainty and precious, where I felt sturdy and messy. And, unlike my mom and grandma and great-grandma, and great-great-grandma, my generation did not NEEED those skills to survive, so I slipped through most of my youth without knowing more than how to sew straight stitches on my mom’s Kenmore.

After highschool, I was asked to be a server in a friend’s wedding. This friend had grown up in a more conservative Mennonite culture, where sewing skills were just absorbed and assumed. When I agreed to be in her wedding, she said she’d get me the fabric for my dress the next week, like it was no big deal. She said I could pick my own dress pattern, but she wanted her servers to wear the same yellow color, with cowboy boots (yes, this was in Oklahoma in 2011, okay!!) The next week at church she gave me 4 yards of pale yellow fabric. I had no plan! No skills! Not even a desire to figure this out! Sewing clothes means measuring yourself, knowing the numbers that seemingly define your body, and as a self-conscious, not-yet-liberated plus size girl in 2011, I wasn’t looking forward to any part of putting pale yellow on my curvy body!

My plan for making the dress for the wedding? BUYING A WHITE DRESS AT ROSS DRESS FOR LESS AND HOT GLUING THE YELLOW FABRIC ON TOP OF IT.

I am not kidding. That was my plan!!!! (??????)

I am nothing if not a scrappy creative problem solver!

When I told my mom my…plan…she said absolutely not, and she agreed to “help” me make the dress. Ugh. We went to Walmart, when Walmart still had the pattern section, where you could sit at a high top table and look through the pattern books to find what you wanted. Mom and I read sizes and numbers and looked at patterns and tried to find something simple enough to make for a first-timer. We also bought some white fabric to line the pale yellow fabric, which was a good call on my mom’s part.

We got the dress made—my mom essentially just told me what to cut and what to iron, while she did the rest of it since I was barely interested. I found a pair of red cowboy boots at the thrift store and was ready to serve the hell out of that little country wedding!!

Bad quality picture, but I am fourth from the left. These are all the other servers, who also had to make their own dresses from pale yellow fabric!

I made a cute little fabric flower pin with the scraps of the dress and a hot glue gun to wear for some pizazz!

The dress was cute, it fit well, and I never wore it again. And I’ve never made a dress again since, except for an attempt last year, when I was just getting into sewing, on my own terms.

Instead of finding a pattern, I just watched a tutorial about how to gather a waist on YouTube, and then started looking for some yardage to practice on.

Ross and I love to go to estate sales, and we found some funky vintage sheets that were super cheap, soooo cute, and also, huge pieces of fabric to work with.

That evening, I took my favorite, simple dress from Kohls down to the Genesis Pod, and essentially traced around it for the “pattern”. I looked at it’s seams, saw how it was sewn, and whipped this little ditty up in two hours!

Is it giving Vonn Trapp curtain dresses? 100%. But, I actually felt super proud of it!!! The sleeves need some work—I didn’t put actual sleeves on it, it is just two pieces of fabric sewn together. My mom admired my dress attempt, but then reminded me that “we are 3-D, so sleeves need to be 3-D”. Lol, okay. Makes sense, I guess, but this worked for now!

I made this dress to wear on our honeymoon in Hawaii, but I never actually wore it—probably because it has sleeves, and when the sun is shinnin, I will choose sleeveless dresses and shirts like 100% of the time. But, I did wear it a year later, which was last month, when Ross and I and our friend Bri went to a cute local tiki bar to celebrate the anniversary of our Hawaii honeymoon!

Sheet dress out in the WILD!

So, here I am!!
My submission for “Me Made May”—my sheet dress!
It isn’t perfect, but it is a step above hot gluing fabric onto a white dress, so, winning!

I want to make more dresses this year. I want to have more submissions for next May! But I know I have a lot of skills and precision and sleeve-constructing to learn before I can advance too far.

If you have made lots of dresses, or have any recommendations for SIMPLE, plus-size friendly patterns or pattern stores, let me know!

Okay! That’s all for now. Happy me-made-May-ing!!

Love,

Kate