Me-Made-March/May... random thoughts

Recently I read about a new blog I thought I'd like to know more about. It's called So Zo and the reason it was being talked about on one of the blogs I already read is because she was doing Me-Made March. Zoe then went on to do Me-Made May and invited anyone who was interested along.

The concept of Me-Made-March/May was to spend a month wearing either nothing but what you made (excluding undies, socks, etc) or at least something that you made each and every day in a month. (That's the simplified version, for more detail check out her blog)

What a cool idea I thought (and still do!) but I couldn't do it. I couldn't even get close! Why? Because I haven't sewn for myself in years. :-( I have virtually nothing in my closet that I have made in recent years and what is there.....is costuming.

So I started to think; why haven't I made anything for myself in years? Here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

Not a lot of time (yeah, so who has?!?!)
More fun to sew for the girls - they're smaller and I love instant gratification.
My sewing room isn't - it's spread out all over the place. (currently 3 different locations plus what I bring out to work on while I'm watching TV sitting on the couch.)
I'm oddly shaped. Yeah, I know, who isn't? But my shaped changed a while ago and since it was right around the time the girls were small and I was sewing for them....well it made it hard to get back into sewing for me; none of the patterns I owned fit and it was just easier doing my sewing for the girls.

So, what can I do about it? I think 2 things are in order for me for the next while;
1- continue working on getting my sewing room into the Pink room upstairs instead of all over the place
2 - work on some basic slopers for myself (and hey maybe for the girls while I'm at it). I know that if I had a proper, fit to me,  sloper so that I could alter the patterns I have to fit me, I'd be a lot more inclined to sew for me.

I have a great set of books that I got a while ago at a garage sale (I kind of collect old sewing books). They are both on making patterns from your basic sloper. One of the books if for women, the 2nd smaller one, for kids.
I think one of my biggest challenges will be the fact that I'm not even front to back. I know, I know, technically no one is but I'm a little more out of propertion than usual. Which probably explains why stuff never really fits me that well. Well, that and ready to wear never really fits anyone well.

Anyway, back to my body shape - after my 2nd daughter was born I made what turned out to be a bad medical choice which ultimately (over a period of about 18 months) caused me to gain about 65 lbs. (Actually I gain more than that but I kept losing in between. 65 lbs was the final result. I have since lost about 17 lbs of it and I hope to keep that up.) Now I've never been a small girl to begin with but this was more than I was comfortable with.
I also gained most of it (or at least that's how it seems) in my stomach area. I'm flat in the butt to begin with and now my front to back ratio is really out of porportion. At this point I'm not sure about how badly "off" I am but I know it's there. If I buy something that fits in overall width at the waist - the side seams skew to the front. If I buy something to fits the front so my seams are straight - I have a lot of extra room in the back. :-(
I have also figured out that my waist in big in proportion to my hips. By looking at catalogues and patterns I know that there should be about 10" difference between the two. I have about 6" difference. That means that when I buy pants to fit my waist they don't really fit my hips; they're too big. No wonder I'm rarely happy in how I look in pants!

So, I'm going to write here, for all the world to see, that I'm going to work on both these issues over the summer (while still working on aprons, Hallowe'en projects and SCA) so that by the time Self-Stitched-September comes along I will at least be able to join a couple of days (or more!) out of the month. And hopefully I'll have some clothes that actually fit!

Ta!