“MeMadeMay (2020) day 14. Rain means I get to wear my cute vintage galoshes. Today it’s Rifle Paper Co. blouse 1.0, and another day of my swing shorts.

Also, after feeling garbage about myself and fighting a number of unsuccessful wet-sets, I’ve finally figured out another executive-dysfunction friendly hairstyle. They’re not really rolls, they don’t need a bunch of backcombing, and they don’t mind that my hair is baby fine and kind of thin. Success!”

Oh. There’s the shorts. Now I don’t feel quite so bad about yesterday’s post just being skeletons. Blouse is the OG Simplicity 2759, from 1949. Every single time I find an interesting piece of vintage fabric at an estate sale, I ask myself if it’s time to make a third one of these. That might be a little excessive, considering how often I wear the other two (it’s… not a lot these days), but I think I could justify another one, with a few adjustments. (I need about an extra half inch across the back, and I’d love to drop the hem by about an inch, because I pull the two existing ones down *constantly*.)

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“MeMadeMay (2020) day lucky 13. A couple of years ago, I bought this great pair of Voodoo Vixen swing shorts, but I suspect I got a bad batch, because I wore them twice and they pilled so badly, I couldn’t wear them anymore. So I did what any other cheapskate with a sewing machine would do: I ripped those suckers apart and made a new pair, this time in hemp denim from Mood fabrics… They do need to be ironed every single time you wear them, but they’re very cool and comfortable, nice and lightweight and swingy.”

You… will notice that these are not photos of me. They are not photos of my shorts, either. Somehow, I got rid of the original images, as they are no longer in my Dropbox, and I don’t like the photos enough to go try and track them down (or take lame screenshots from IG). So you get photos of art class skeletons having existential crises, because that is one of my favorite things to stumble across and subsequently photograph when I go to work.

Apropos of nothing, I wasn’t a huge fan of the shorts themselves, either, though I did try very much to like them. I ended up cutting parts of them into my third pair of Pietra shorts.

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“MeMadeMay (2020) day 12. On that no-makeup train for the millionth day in a row. I made the grey top from a StyleArc pattern last May, as a test before making one for my client. We’re close-ish in size, (I’m a little wider all around) but I prefer my clothes substantially more fitted than modern style dictates, so I figured it would be an ok gamble, plus I really needed to know what sewing with an indie pattern was like, since I’d never used one before. Unfortunately, it’s quite tight across my shoulders, but it’s still cute enough for short outings, and every outing is short in quarantine. Bonus make: the belt, again. Wow, do I love this belt.”

Top is (was) a StyleArc Dimity top in mystery fabric from the Textile Discount Outlet. Belt is Butterick 4497 from 1975(ish) in rust microsuede, also from the Textile Discount Outlet.

I find myself feeling very divorced from pretty much everything related to sewing and making lately. I’ve felt that way for years, actually, and I’m reasonably certain that I’ve said this exact thing in future MMMay posts. It’s not just sewing, it’s knitting, photography, anything you could consider something that I do for myself. There are a lot of reasons for that. Lack of space, lack of money, lack of energy. It’s difficult to justify making new things for yourself when your whole life is just a giant, overwhelming game of Tetris.

I do get rid of things (I no longer have this grey top), and things wear out or are destroyed (MOTHS). I’m actually kind of nervous for this May, I feel like I’m very much back at the beginning, where I have nothing reasonable to wear at all. But when I think of trying to fix that, even though I know I enjoy the process and even though there is a part of me that is *yearning* to do something nice for myself… There’s this huge piece of me that’s just convinced that I’ve forgotten how to do everything. That I’ll never be able to do it again. That I’ll just ruin everything I touch. That there’s no point.

I promise, I’m trying. But it’s not easy.

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“MeMadeMay (2020) day 11. Monterrey Jacques’ birthday, so I’m out in a skirt and channeling my best 50’s cheerleader. My bangs are a little more Tonya Harding than bumper bangs today, but an attempt was made. The skirt was the second thing I ever made, and if you could see all the ragged, unfinished seams and hem on the inside, you’d believe it. I still love it though.”

Ahh, Accidentally Tonya Harding. Maybe not one of my best looks, particularly for Kenneth’s birthday, but not terrible. That skirt *was* the second human-sized garment I ever made, immediately after my Murder vest, and it was done with a circle-skirt calculator instead of a pattern. This was also actually originally made for a burlesque costume, so it has a zipper that zips all the way down to the hem.

Also, holy time-warp, Batman! I told you all I’d fall off the wagon eventually, but with a scant week to go before MMMay 2026 (!?!) I’m feeling a little more like maybe I should get myself back into the swing of things.

Also, also, I miss that coat. It was Guess, and had really lovely gold-tone hardware, and I did absolutely wear it out, but it was beautiful while it lasted.

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“MeMadeMay (2020), day 10. It’s a super lazy Sunday, and I’m not going out today (rain. So much rain.) so I didn’t bother ever putting on real clothes. So I’ll show off my stack of Me-made hats. (This isn’t all of them.)

I took a millinery class at Columbia College Chicago a few years ago, which is where the headdress and pillbox come from. (The headdress is a knockoff of one worn by Myrna Loy.) The apple hats are from a Simplicity pattern from the 70’s. (Simplicity 9644 from 1971, in point of fact.)”

The photo of the stack of hats on my head may or may not be a direct reference to the children’s book Caps for Sale. (This is the affiliate link, y’all. I am more than happy to shill for delightful children’s literature.)

There are certain days when MeMadeMay gets really difficult for me, and it’s really any day that I can’t go outside, for whatever reason. This always strikes me as a little funny, because there are a LOT of participants who shoot every outfit against the same wall in their house, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it just doesn’t interest me. (To do. I follow plenty of creators who do this, and that doesn’t bother me, it’s just not who I am as a person.) …It probably doesn’t help that I don’t actually have a single inch of bare space in my apartment. I have taken photos in the apartment over the years, but I really, really hate doing it and it feels like I’m failing somehow.

That said, it’s always fun to have what I call a “contingency day”. You’ll end up seeing it happen exactly once every couple of years. I’ll pull out all my hats, or all my socks, or all my identical copies of… whatever, and just take really dumb photos. And it really helps break up the monotony if, for example, the weather is just wretched the whole month (half of my makes are shorts, as it turns out).

And how many times do you get to see someone who’s made a bunch of hats? I really love millinery, and the class I took when I was in school was fabulous. (I don’t miss having band-aids on literally every finger from stabbing myself with the curved needles though.) It’s not a skill I’ve kept up with very well (though I did make at least one headdress for a friend when I was still doing burlesque), but I suppose that’s the problem with having 87 million interests. And I really don’t wear hats very often anymore, with the exception of those apple hats. I do have a really extensive collection of vintage hats, and I used to wear them frequently, but my current lifestyle doesn’t lend itself so well to swanning around.

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“MeMadeMay (2020), day 9. Blouse 2 from my favorite blouse pattern (Simplicity 2759), with and without optional 70’s cop show variant (I think I look like a 70’s cop in this outfit plus leather jacket.)

Bonus: These pants are vintage US Navy trousers. I found a US Navy uniform in an antique store and the pants were the perfect size for me. They’re super comfy, and very sharp!”

…They’re very sharp if you don’t mind needing to spend 6 solid minutes unbuttoning them to use the bathroom, lol. Also, those pants themselves probably only fit me for about 6 solid minutes, thanks to having to live indoors and the imminent cessation of my dancing career. Such is life.

I love taking pictures outside Kenneth’s mother’s garage. This perplexes… pretty much everybody, because it’s a faded little box in a sun-bleached alley, but there’s something about really peely paint that I just love. If it were truly possible to do, I really think that my peak aesthetic is a state of arrested decay. Unfortunately decay really doesn’t stop just because you want it to, and anything you do to mitigate it really just makes it disappear in the process.

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“MeMadeMay (2020) day 8. SPACEDRESS, because it’s freezing outside and I only have so many matching pairs of Sock Dreams‘ Very Tall Socks.

I’m having a super crap self-image day, I hate how round and flat and stupid my face looks when my hair isn’t done. I feel like the ugliest person on the planet today, so… the fact that I’m even posting these photos is kind of a miracle.

On the other hand, I think it’s very interesting how differently my dresses fit when I actually choose to wear foundation garments under them, even though they’re made to my unaltered measurements. Food for thought.”

You know, I never thought that I spent all that much time or energy thinking or talking about my appearance. And then I started transcribing my MMMay posts. And I really don’t know what to do with that information. It’s kind of disturbing, actually.

Getting down to brass tacks: One: I look like Little Edie, lol. Two: I never wear foundation garments anymore. I won’t say *never*, never. I’ve been known to whip out a girdle now and again. But I never wear corsets anymore. Truthfully, most of my dresses fit better without them, and I’ve opted for the much more low-maintenance option of just… wearing a vintage Playtex Cross Your Heart bra. It’s legitimately shocking how much just that will do. Three: girl, your face will look one thousand percent less like the goddamn moon if you just put on some makeup. That’s it. That’s the solution.

SPACEDRESS is New York 1057, which is apparently not on the Vintage Pattern Wiki. Brb, fixing that.

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“MeMadeMay (2020) day 7. It’s been a week already? I’m finding it substantially easier to dress myself this year, lol. This lil’ tunic came from a 60’s pattern and more Mood fabric. I want to love it, but I need to take the whole thing apart and fix it. I made it in a rush last year, in the hopes that I wouldn’t have to repeat all my outfits 6 times, and it came out too big and boxy. I added French darts tot the front to take in the excess there, but left the back and made some *ahem* interesting choices when it came time to hem. So, it’s super cute, but quite problematic in its current state.

Cameo by Kenneth, with his “no mask, no problem” solution to standing in lines.”

Is there anything left to say about the Ugly Snowflake Tank that I haven’t already said? It’s still Simplicity 8246. Every time I have to link it to the Vintage Pattern Wiki (and therefore see the envelope illustration), I think to myself maybe it would be worth the trouble to try that pattern again. After all, 99% of the issue was that I was bad at math. On the other hand… I actually like this one, with its million extra darts to fix the fit, much better than the original version with just bust darts.

And… as a completely unrelated note, can I just say that typing these posts into WordPress ENRAGES me, because every single one ends up having a terrible “readability score”, which really just means that the words I use are too big. Or that my sentences are too long. Which, fair. I write exactly the same way that I speak, rambling and full of side quests. I know it doesn’t actually mean anything. But I want to Win at Blogging, which is both reasonable to want and possible to achieve. /s

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“MeMadeMay (2020) day 6. Rifle Paper Co. blouse number 2: the one I made incorrectly and therefore never quite fit. Well, the good news is that it fits as well as it ever has, so here we are. Also featuring my favorite Voodoo Vixen trousers. Today’s laundry day, so I’m enjoying the briefest respite from my tiny apartment and getting some dance rehearsal time. It feels so nice to have space to move!”

Ahh, those halcyon days at the beginning (relatively speaking) of the pandemic. When we thought that everything would be back to normal any day now. When Vaudezilla was still around, and they still had their studio space on Irving Park, I would go there to do laundry because my building charges $2 to wash and $2 to dry, and our dryers at the time… basically didn’t work. The V! studio was originally built out to be a live/work space, and had in-unit laundry (read: FREE) in the basement. Kenneth and I would pick up coffee from Beans and Bagels, schlep our clothes and my costumes (and frequently my camera and tripod) to the studio so I could rehearse and record video for the Zoom shows we were all still trying to do. And it was nice because Kenneth had finally moved in with me full-time in March, and we wouldn’t actually be any further than 10 feet apart for the next… almost three years.

That blouse is Simplicity 4238, from 1953. Mistakes were made (which I’m sure I detailed the last time I posted it), but the one thing I remember that I don’t think I’ve said before is that one of the things I had to do to compensate for it’s unfortunate size issues was work the buttonholes as close to the center front edge as possible. They were really kind of harrowing. This might have been the last time I wore it, actually.

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“MeMadeMay (2020) day 5. A twofer, also an all-accessories day. I made the hat ages ago, and the belt in about an hour, two days ago. I feel like, I definitely love making vintage dresses and embracing my glamorous side, but on the days that I just want to be comfortable and casual, my first love has always been the slightly funky corner of the 70’s.”

Oh boy, do I remember this day. I really can’t remember all the circumstances, but this was still pretty early into the time when Kenneth was helping me take my photos for MMMay, and this was one of those days where he had a lot of suggestions and I just… didn’t want any of them, and it was really frustrating me. So I ended up wandering into the square, in the rain, and doing photos myself. And if you’re looking at the pictures, you can’t even tell, so that’s nice. The hat is, perpetually, Simplicity 9644 and the belt is Butterick 4497.

This also feels like one of the first times that I was really trying to find some kind of words to describe my personal style. I had a lot of self-consciousness for awhile about my style, mostly because you see a lot of really successful vintage style accounts on social media, but at the time when I was really getting into making my own clothes, they were primarily 40’s/50’s leaning. I really had difficulty coming to terms with the fact that I really wasn’t going to be the kind of girl who was going to set her hair every night and wear dresses all the time, because it was just such a beautiful fantasy. And because I always sort of felt like there was some kind of invisible roadblock that kept me from being as accepted and appreciated as I felt like maybe I should have been, and my inability to just fully capitulate to that style felt like part of that failure.

I don’t, for the record, feel that way now. I still embrace a variety of styles, and I have fun with whatever I feel like wearing on any given day. Sometimes I feel a little guilty when certain things I’ve made languish in my closet (because I go through phases in what I’m wearing), but I usually come back to most things, and if I don’t, I let them move on to someone else.

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