• Me Made Ensembles

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a me-made midweek outfit, but I’m going to try to do them more often. I’ve seen me-made midweek done on many German sewing blogs (they call it “Me-Made Mittwoch”). Inspired by them, I started doing doing my own me-made midweek a couple years ago. I fell off the bandwagon long ago, but I think it’s high time to hop back on.

This simple dress is the absolute first thing I made after moving to Germany. When I arrived here in August 2009 to do a student abroad year, I had just two suitcases – no sewing machine. I had no plans to get one either. After all, when I moved back to California at the end of the year, I’d have to sell or toss everything that wouldn’t fit back in those suitcases.

However, I travelled to Paris during my first month in Europe, and there I discovered the fabric district at the foot of the Sacré-Coeur. They have a five story fabric store of drool-worthy fabric, called the Marché Saint-Pierre and surrounding it are small fabric shops, as well as stores specializing in notions, and lots of stores selling coupons, discounted remnants that are three yards or smaller.

I bought loads of fabric.

Back in Berlin for the beginning of the school year, I now had a stash of beautiful fabric I couldn’t sew. By October, I broke down. I walked into a sewing machine shop and asked them for the cheapest machine they had. Ten minutes later I walked out with a Brother JS-23,  a new pair of shears, and a box of straight pins. I was ready to sew!

When I got home, I pulled out this Parisian fabric. Since I hadn’t bought a sewing pattern, I decided to make a simple dress from a series of rectangles. It could be worn loose or belted, and layered over shirts and thermal leggings in winter.

I used elastic in the back for a forgiving fit and put the straps right next to each other so that they’d never slip off my shoulders.

In the five years since I’ve worn this dress often because it’s versatile and pretty. It even made during appearance in Me-Made May this year, masquerading as a shirt.

Would you ever take part in a me-made challenge? If you did, would you prefer me-made May, where you go all out with outfits and pictures for a month, then take the rest of the year off, or something like me-made midweek, that goes on year-round but isn’t every day?