Me-Made May 2015

This year I participated for the first time in Me-Made May, a challenge that consists in wearing something handmade (sewed, knitted, etc.) each day during the whole month of May. The goal is to encourage people to wear, appreciate, evaluate these garments, and maybe learn some lessons on what works as part of a coherent wardrobe and what doesn’t. As I really enjoyed participating, I figured I might share my impressions here. After the break: some pie charts and an animated gif!

So everyday for the last month I made sure that I was wearing at least one handmade item. As I wear a lot of what I make, that wasn’t a problem in itself, but I also added the additional goal to try to avoid wearing the same garment twice in the month, so that more of my wardrobe would be part of the rotation. This second part turned out to be quite hard at the end of the month, because I spent the last two weeks travelling in France and that my luggage space was limited.

In the end I wore 12 different dresses (4 of them I wore twice in the month), 6 skirts, 6 tops and 1 knitted cardigan. I thought that the dresses would be even more prominent, as that’s most of what I sew, but apparently Deer&Doe patterns were a game changer, both for tops (Plantain, Bruyère, Datura) and skirts (Chardon and Brume). The only frustrating part of the month was that I wasn’t able to wear everyday my latest dress, a shirtdress from La Mia Boutique magazine that I had finished right at the end of April (and which has of course became my new favorite dress).

As for the patterns these garments were made from:

It’s no surprise that Deer&Doe is leading, followed by Burda for the older projects and Colette (due to my recent Moneta obsession). I thought I had made way more patterns from the Big 4 (Butterick, Vogue, Simplicity…) but apparently these were mostly party dresses that are not fit for everyday wear.

I documented all of this by posting one picture per day on my Instagram feed, trying to keep the same pose on every picture (which annoyed like crazy the friends who follow me but know me from real life and do not care about sewing… sorry pals!). So I cannot resist showing a recap in animated gif form:

The whole thing was a great experience, especially since I have a lot of trouble posting regularly on this blog; both the picture taking and the writing parts take me a lot of time and I struggle to get myself organized. So posting daily Instagram pictures was a good way to be able to share things more often. And while I like to show what I make, the main benefit from this challenge was learning about my wardrobe. The first two weeks were especially enlightening, as I was working and it was sometimes hard to find clothes that I felt comfortable going to work in. Most of the skirts and dresses I made turned out to be a bit too short for my taste, and often too bright and colored. I know that I can wear whatever I want (especially here in the States where people are way less judgemental about how other people are dressed compared to France), but I work in a majoritarily male environment and I am amongst the youngest of my peers, so I don’t want to play the “twee” card too much. Now I’d like to make some office-friendly clothes that would be a bit classier than what I have: knee-length skirts, button-downs, and some Nettie bodysuits to wear with all my high-waisted skirts…

What about you, did you participate in Me-Made May? What are your take-aways?