Me-Made-May 2019 - Fern and Feather Jumper

It is the 1st of May, and it is my very first time taking part in the Me-Made-May Challenge hosted by Zoe of the So Zo What Do You Know Blog, and it is the 10th Year of the challenge. I had heard of the challenge before hand, but only really in passing. But it was this year, with my more recent sewing experience with Tilly and the Buttons new book, Love At First Stitch I decided that I was going to join in.

The idea is to make a challenge for yourself and make a pledge to complete your challenge. My pledge I made on the SoZo Blog, to try and wear at least one item of clothing that I had made every day throughout May. Hopefully in the process I will be able to find out what sort of things I need in my own Me-Made wardrobe. Now the challenge is not a photo challenge, but people are more than welcome to share their photos and progress. I personally want to share photos in my instagram stories to keep me accountable every day to make sure that I do manage to carry out this challenge.

What I plan to do is every day that I wear a new Me-Make, I will post a little blog post here with information about what it is, the pattern I have made it from, and the materials I have used. So I will start off my first blog post of Me-Made-May 2019 with my Fern and Feather Jumper.

This is the Fern and Feather knitting pattern by Jennifer Steingas, that you can find on Ravelry. The yarn I used was by Countess Ablaze, the base for both colours was the Grande Merino base. The main colour was Footloose (Funk Remix), and the contrasting colour was in a natural undyed, white colour.

The pooling of the colours of green throughout the jumper I loved, and it was my first proper garment! I had knitted a jumper before, but it was without a pattern, having never made an adult sized jumper before and I went ahead and winged it, and it isn't quite right. I think for Me-Made-May I will get it out and do some jumper surgery. But back to the Fern and Feather.

It really was a joy to knit, and the colour work yoke was surprisingly easy. I loved it so much, that I knit another one for my Mam.

My knitting however wasn't without it's mistakes. The biggest mistake however, wasn't really anything to do with my knitting, But my ability to read the pattern instructions properly.

Those of you who have made a Fern and Feather before will know that the pattern is designed with about 3 inches of positive ease. As you can see from mine, there isn't any. Now I am dyslexic and I struggle to process information properly the first time a read it and that is exactly what happened and by the time I had realised I had already done the yoke, split the sleeves and started on the body. So I assumed that seeing as the pattern had 3 inches of positive ease, that making the size that was my bust measurement would mean that it would be 3 inches bigger than that. But I was wrong - oh well!

I had got quite far when I realised and I decided to just carry on and finish the jumper. I am glad I did, but I will admit that it was the reason that this jumper has only really been worn once or twice since it was made, which is a shame really.

Putting this jumper on this morning was a joy though, and I can't really believe that I was holding off from wearing this jumper just because it wasn't like the pattern suggested. I'll leave you with today's photo from when I put it on. Check out my instagram stories for the daily updates on what I am wearing each day (previous days will be saved on a highlight that you can find on my instagram profile) and you will see how often this jumper gets worn. Hopefully a lot more than it ever has been!

Happy Making, I hope your Me-Made-May is enjoyable, however you plan to spend it.