Me Made May 2016

Dearest readers
In honour of this year's Me Made May I pledge the following:

I, Laura from http://www.thepetitepassions.com and @petitepassions, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '16. I endeavour to wear at least one me made item every week for the duration of May 2016, from my small but growing handmade wardrobe. I will be devoting my blog to solely sewing related posts throughout May too.

This month also sees the start of the new series of the Great British Sewing Bee, and marks my first whole year of dressmaking, so be prepared to see lots of posts about learning to sew and beginning this journey, as well as joining in all this May makery. I'm looking forward to seeing what everybody creates and shares in this time so give me a shout out on social media to share yours too!

King Prawn Linguine

Looking at the recipes from this blog it's pretty obvious that I like things that are fast and easy...the least amount of fiddling and washing up the better! That's one of the reasons I love this prawn linguine. It literally takes as long as pasta needs to cook from start to finish, and it tastes so good too. Now, unusually I've written this recipe for one person. That's because I only ever make this for myself if I happen to be eating alone (other half hates prawns but I love them). You may think the bacon is odd but it's one of those ingredients that you don't notice but gives a deep salty undertone to the sweetness of the other elements. I see this dish a lot in the ready meal aisles but seriously this is so quick and simple I don't see why you would need to buy it ready done (and it's cheaper this way too). You can obviously make this for more than one by multiplying up the quantities!

Poppy Playsuit Class at Sew Over It

I am a fan of everything over on the Sew Over It website... the patterns, the fabric, the vlog. They also have two sewing cafes in London where they run classes from for sewists, as well as sell fabrics and haberdashery items. I've been eager to try a number of classes and finally found one I could go to; the Poppy Playsuit. This is an intermediate skill level pattern, and the class I took was run on one day in the Islington branch (10am-5pm). It cost £99, reduced by 10% by signing up for the newsletter.

Softly Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Salmon Brunch

Gotta love a weekend brunch...croissants, bacon, eggs...all sorts of goodies. We have scrambled eggs every Saturday after our Park Run anyway but every now and again a more luxurious touch is a real treat. That's where this comes in...softly scrambled eggs on a toasted bagel with ribbons of sweet smoked salmon.

Wren Dress by Colette Patterns

This Wren dress came into being mainly because I fell in love with a knit fabric and then had to find a way of wearing it. I saw a beautiful viscose fabric from The Splendid Stitch for £11.20 per metre. I  immediately ordered two metres before looking around for a pattern. Once the fabric arrived I decided to look for a wrap dress because it draped so beautifully. I was very tempted by Named’s Olivia, Hot Pattern’s Weekender and Sew Over It’s Ultimate Wrap Dress…..until the Wren came out. The key feature that attracted me to the Wren was the faux wrap structure. I have found that wrap dress can be liable to slip or gape on my frame and having a faux bodice would help eliminate this issue. I went for Version 2 of the dress with sleeves and a gathered skirt. It turned out to be a good move as this dress was easy to construct and wears really well.