We’re almost halfway into Me Made May, and I’m keeping on track with my pledge so far! I pledged to wear at least one item of me-made clothing every day, and to not buy any new fabric. This has lead to a few developments! First of all, I was overwhelmed with the state of my sewing zone and FINALLY got around to doing a huge organization evening. I bought a ton of clear containers and completely reorganized my fabric stash, sorting into smaller containers than I’d previously used so I could have things by substrate and actually see everything. I also got eight small clean containers that I can keep upcoming projects stored in so I can see them all but not be overwhelmed by piles of patterns and pre-washed fabric. If you want to see photos of what I did, you can check out my Instagram post here! Another thing I’ve been noticing so far is that when I’m not committed to wearing things I’ve made, my instinct is to wear jeans a lot of the time. This is huuugely emphasizing the fact that I only have one pair of me-made jeans in rotation right now (the first pair I made I don’t really wear because of the feeling of the fabric I used, and they’re a bit big in the waist) AND I don’t have a lot of separates that I actually gravitate toward. I previously made a lot of button-up shirts, but I’m actually not a button-up shirt person and would prefer to have a bunch of comfortable but professional looking t-shirt/tank top type garments. I’m hoping to tackle the tops issue in the next little bit, and am scouring patterns on The Foldline to see everything that’s out there. And for jeans, I started with trying out the Megan Nielsen Dawn jeans pattern! (Apologizes in advance for the many photos of my butt that you will see below…)
Sizing-wise, based on my measurements (29.5″ waist, 39″ hips) I went with a size 10 everywhere except for grading to a 12 at the waist, and I’m suuuuper happy with the fit! I didn’t make ANY other modifications, and they turned out great. In terms of Megan Nielsen patterns, the only one I’d tried before was the Darling Ranges dress (although only a wearable muslin because it turned out the style didn’t suit me) but I want to investigate more of her patterns after seeing how well these fit! Seems like her block is pretty suited to my shape. The only thing is that I went with the regular length instead of the tall length, because I am definitely not tall – I’m 5’4″. But they came out short on me, so I think my legs are disproportionately long for my height. The instructions say to fold up by 1/2″ twice but I didn’t have the length to spare so I serged the raw edge and then folded up by 3/8″ and topstitched that. I might end up wearing them cuffed in future because they’re borderline noticeably too short.
I had this piece of 100% cotton denim in my stash because I’d planned to make the Hampton jean jacket, but then ended up finding the perfect jean jacket at a secondhand store. A while ago I ordered 100 jeans buttons and 100 rivets from Grommet Mart because I got tired of not being able to find good ones in local stores and figured I’d end up using them all eventually. I had a zipper in my stash, and I ended up getting new topstitching thread after reading about an alternate type in this blog post by Lauren at Lladybird about her own Dawn jeans. It’s called Mara 70 by Gutermann, and it’s a bit lighter weight and my machine liked it SO MUCH BETTER than regular topstitching thread that most fabric stores keep in stock. I ordered a classic yellow (seen here), a grey, and a fun fuschia/purple. If you have struggles with thread nests and making buttonholes with regular topstitching thread, I highly recommend you give this a try because it’s still visible as contrast stitching but produces much less swearing.
There’s a pattern piece included for a leather waistband patch and I decided to make one for this pair. I bought a bag of leather scraps from a local place more than a year ago for $30-40, which seemed super expensive at the time because I only needed a little bit to use as a closure on a bag I was making. But I’ve used it for so many things since! Lots of bags, and now these jeans – I have a bunch of bigger scraps left that I think I’ll use for jeans patches in the future because I really like how it looks! (You can see it in one of the photos above, I didn’t realize my t-shirt was covering it up in all of the other photos, ooooops!)
The fly construction was different than I was used to (I’ve made a couple pairs of Ginger jeans before), but I like how it turned out! I don’t think I really have a preference between the two methods. The main difference in terms of the pattern pieces is that on the Gingers, the fly is an extension on the front leg, whereas on the Dawn jeans it’s a separate pattern piece. I realized when finally sorting by substrate in my stash organizing (I’d previously just had it sorted between quilting and garment fabrics) that I have 4-5 pieces of Cone Mills or similarly high quality stretch denim. I think I’ll likely make another pair of Gingers next. I really gravitate toward stretch jeans, usually tight and very skinny, and a lower rise than the Dawn jeans. I think I’ll get a lot of wear out of these, but I generally just prefer the look and feel of a lower rise, skinnier jean. I think maybe it’s because I’ve already got more legs than torso so I don’t necessarily want the proportion of my legs to my overall self to increase at the expense of my short torso.
For my tops problem, there’s a number of patterns I’ve been looking at so far, but I’m only halfway through the tops section of the Foldline database. I’m probably going to post about them on Instagram once I’ve narrowed down my potential options so I can get feedback from all you lovely people! Who out there has made their own jeans? Which patterns have you made? What do you like best? Leave me a comment!
