We’re making our way through May, and I thought I’d share some updates on the progress and developments for my Me Made May 2025. I’ve posted a bit on instagram and my YouTube channel, but I thought it’d be helpful to do a bigger update and bring you up to speed here.
(I am wearing a new shirt here, the Bo by Seamwork Magazine.)
Clothing Progress
I’ve wanted to do something with some of my Me Made clothing that I’m not wearing, and that doesn’t fit or suit me anymore. At first, I thought it’d be fun to combine a lot of it into a single project, but as I’ve started to work through it, I’m realizing there might be a better way to approach it.
As a whole, it feels overwhelming. There’s not just a lot of pieces, but there are also different types of fabrics, and I’m not super stoked about using all of it together. Originally, I thought it would be fun to bring in a new fabric that could tie things together. It could give the project new life and a creative direction that I could get excited about. The problem is that I was having a harder time seeing this as I was looking through the options. What’s feeling better to me now is taking it on a piece-by-piece basis. This change and realization has helped me make progress.
Double Gauze – Case Study #1
Sometimes when you are stuck, it’s good to go with what is calling out to you the loudest. For me, it was the double gauze. I knew all along that I didn’t want to mix my double gauze with everything else. It has such a different drape and feel that it made the most sense to me to keep these pieces together.
I had 3 double gauze dresses, and I realized that I’d probably wear this first one if it were a shirt rather than a dress. This would be such an easy fix.
Ignore the wrinkles, ahem. When trying it on, I marked a good length with pins. I liked the split hem on the dress, and so I decided I could bring that over as a top, which is why you’ll see the 2 pins on the right. Top pin marks the start of the split, and the bottom pin marks the final length.
Then I did a little chop chop to the bottom and seam ripped the sides for the split. I also decided to do a high-low hem as was done with the dress. It’s easy enough to change it if I don’t like it later. I tried it on again to make sure it was still working before moving on to the next step.
There she is, freshly hemmed up. Breathing new, usable life into something that you haven’t been wearing is exhilarating, quite frankly.
I’m happy to say that I’ve been wearing this shirt. (Of course I had to make a mini to match.) The length is great because I can wear it out or tuck it in like I did here. It’s also just so comfy. Yay, double gauze! Yay, sewing for solving problems!
Double Gauze – Everything Else
I still had 2 other double gauze dresses made from the same pattern. (Inari Tee by Named if you are curious.) For whatever reason neither of these other two felt like they needed to be shirts, and so I took them apart.
To be honest, I didn’t put a ton of thought into how I wanted to cut these down after separating the dress at the seams.
9-inch squares seemed like a good large-sized square to cut, then 5-inch squares felt good for smaller pieces, and I was able to eek out 4-inch squares as well. Will these sizes work together? Not really, but since I don’t know how much I’ll end up with overall, this seemed like a good set of sizes to go with. I have scraps and yardage of other double gauze fabrics in my stash, so I’m guessing I can make a few projects with it. TBD!
The double gauze is just so fluffy and squishy. I love it so much.
Everglade and Liberty
After my double gauze repurposing success, I was pretty jazzed to tackle something else. This is totally that thing where they say to start somewhere that makes sense, and then inertia will start to take over.
I’ve been making Scrappy Everglade blocks lately, and so it felt fitting to check my clothing pile for a background fabric to cut into.
Top right is the final from the shirt, and the other two are blocks I also added this week. I’m on a roll! (You can find my Everglade pattern here.)
Liberty Charms
I’m not lying when I say that the inertia of doing one project pushes me to the next. After that success, I decided to make use of some Liberty charm squares that my mom recently gave me. Aren’t they so pretty?
Although it can more easily be mixed with other fabrics, Liberty–like double gauze–can be a fabric you like using with itself or with other lawns. The fabric is buttery, lightweight and so soft. Conveniently I had a lawn dress in my pile of do-something-else-with-it stuff.
Again, ignore the wrinkles. I like this dress and have worn it, but a basically-white, lawn dress is somewhat impractical for me. It needs a slip, and I’m going to spill something on it. Time to cut it apart!
I didn’t want to do anything too nutty with the squares, so I decided to cut each charm (5-inch square) into four 2-1/2 inch squares. It breaks the liberty up and just looks nice.
At first I was thinking I could put solid squares between each of these blocks, but I’m kind of liking them more without it.
What do you think? I have most of the back of the dress still to cut, so I might have enough to finish out the rest of the squares. If I run out, I’ll find something else. It’s not a big deal.
Clothing Updates
In new-clothing news, I have made some new things recently. We can forget that I started the month with the mission to re-purpose previously made things. How can I not be inspired by what other folks are making and wearing this month?
The most recent finish is this new dress that is not the romper that it was supposed to be.
The plan was the Lenora Romper by Fabric-Store. I was thinking that the design and pattern pieces had more fullness than I’d want, but I still carried on with making a romper as-is until the first try-on.
It was at that point that I decided the most logical path forward for me would be to abandon romper plans and convert it into a dress. I loved the fit of the top, I loved the way the fabric was working, and there was plenty of fabric to shape a skirt on the bottom. It was surprisingly easy to make this adjustment, especially since I needed to take so much in on the sides. In the end, it’s heavily modified, but the mods weren’t too tricky to implement at the stage where I wanted to make the changes.
Overall Thoughts and Reflections
Overall, I’m pretty stoked with how this Me Made May is shaping up even though it’s not going in exactly the direction I had planned. It can be hard to find your way through an idea when new challenges pop up, but these challenges are also opportunities. If we allow ourselves to move in directions that feel the most obvious at first, it can awaken other ideas as we go.
Lastly, some new shorts thanks to the Saturday Shorts by Enderal Sews. They’re a dream, and I’ll be making many more in the future.
Die you make your pants in the blue dress-into-shirt photo? Do you remember which pattern you used (perhaps it was self-drafted)? Many thanks for the continuing inspiration.