memademay

A few days ago was the end of the latest edition of Me-Made May, this annual challenge to wear at least one handmade garment every day of the month. After having a blast for my first participation last year, I enrolled again for 2016. Here is the recap, with pie charts and an animated gif of course!

Just like last year, I flooded my Instagram account with endless clones/selfies, with leads us to this wonderful gif:

memademay-2016-optimized

A few thoughts come to mind:

• Clearly, I have enough me-made garments to last one, if not two months, wearing one everyday without repeats. According to Stylebook (in which I try to log all my clothes) the last count is 58 pieces that come from my sewing machine or knitting needles, and I haven’t even finished indexing everything. I am very impressed by people like Eléonore who manage to regularly purge their closet of all their non-worn garments. I have so much trouble letting go of clothes I have made, even when I haven’t taken them off their hanger in years…

• I had to wear several pieces twice because I went on vacation for two weeks with just a carry-on. I wanted to avoid repeating complete outfits so I tried to pack garments that I could wear several ways. I also went crazy with a nautical theme and I can’t resist showing you my matching packing-list (with outfits on the right, again thanks to Stylebook – I am obsessed with this app…):

stylebook-packing

• As for versatility, I had great hopes that my Lupin jacket would work with everything but I was a bit disappointed, as I seem to only wear it with jeans. On the other hand, Mélilot is clearly a winner: it is the most comfortable shirt I own, and I like it as much worn over jeans than tucked into a skirt. The outsider making a comeback is my Mabel skirt, which I considered an utter failure. It turns out it works with a lot of shirts and sweaters I own, and the silhouette is a welcome change. I still have an issue with the bulky waistband, so I’m hoping I can replace it with a navy Brume skirt soon.

memademay2

 

Let’s now turn to the pie charts, in light of last year’s ones.

type

 

Here are the types of garments I have worn during the month:

• 11 dresses: gingham shirtdress, Centaurée, Anna, floral and blue Moneta (worn twice), Dolce Vita, Zéphyr (worn twice), gingham dress, navy chiffon dress and Liberty fabric dress
• 7 skirts: Chardon, Brume, Mabel (portée 2 fois), jupe moutarde, jupe en vichy, Fumeterre and Zéphyr (not blogged yet)
• 6 tops: Ondée (worn twice, not blogged yet), teal (worn twice) and purple Plantain tees, Mélilot (worn twice), Datura and King Kong t-shirt
• 1 jacket (Lupin), worn 3 times

Compared to last year, there is a larger proportion of separates compared to dresses. This is symptomatic of how I have felt for a while, which is that I tend to want to sew fewer dresses and more tops and skirts so that I have a more versatile wardrobe. Now for the pattern brands…

brand

What a surprise, even more Deer&Doe than last year! I used to sew Deer&Doe patterns a lot, and now, well, I work there, so… Once more I am puzzled by the absence of Big 4 patterns given that I own so much of those. I guess I buy a lot of these patterns (who can resist Jo-Ann pattern sales?) but then I get caught in the latest indie patterns craze..? I need to go back to my pattern library, because I am sure I have a few treasures hidden there…

How about you, any interesting insights for Me-Made May this year?