Some thoughts on MeMadeMay ’17…

We’re getting close to the end of MeMadeMay ‘17 and I thought I’d put down some thoughts on how I’ve done.

A quick reminder first though. So MeMadeMay is something that Zoe from ‘SoZo’, blog has been hosting for the last 8 years. The idea is that everyone who wishes to join in, makes a pledge. Each pledge can be totally individual. The general idea is to wear as many self-made items as you can manage throughout the month. Some people pledge to wear two outfits a week….some one item a day…others also might pledge to make some of their fabric stash into more memades to wear as well. You tailor (pardon the pun!) your personal pledge to your own parameters.

My pledge was to try wear at least one memade item a day.

So how have I done so far? Not bad at all, I’m pleased to say, in fact on several occasions I wore three memade items at once. I haven’t posted every single day on Instagram. I missed a couple here and there, but I feel quite good about the whole experience. I would say my wardrobe isn’t particularly big and I’m fairly happy with how much I have, plus a lot of it is made by me. I have some RTW jeans, tees and sweaters, but everything else excluding underwear and shoes is memade.

Here’s a selection of my outfits. Not my usual type of photos as they were all taken on my phone as either selfies, or done by my son (with much hilarity and camera shaking on his part!)

I recently started a bullet journal after seeing and reading about how Emma from Emma And Her Machine had started one for sewing and other bits and bobs, so after a bit more research I started one myself.  I dedicated a double page spread in my ‘BuJo’ for making notes about MMMay. Each day I’ve written down what I wore and sometimes I added notes about how much I liked(or not) each combination. I tried out one or two new combinations and also wore some tried and true outfits too. I repeated parts of or whole outfits from time to time which is to be expected.

I’ve noticed a couple of wardrobe gaps that I’d like to fill sometime….I think I would really like a light grey casual skirt and possibly a cream one too because they are both my ‘go to’ neutral colours for Spring/Summer. I also love wearing slim legged, cropped ponte knit trousers around the house as well as trousers with a looser fit and a jogger type hem with side zip. I want to make another pair in each of these styles. A couple more interesting long sleeved jersey tops would be welcome too and I’ve realised that I would like to gradually, over time introduce some more short sleeved tees to eventually replace my RTW tees.

Apart from my Bullet Journal, I started off a notebook that I’m going to dedicate just to outfit notes. One of my problems if that I often ‘forget’ what outfits combinations work and what combinations are possible to make from any one particular wardrobe item, so I default to just one version. This is when I start to get lazy and keep on repeating one set outfit instead of other possibly more interesting combos, just because I forget what I have or what looks good together. So, I’m going to have a page for each wardrobe item and on that page will be a list of what works well with it…. In the same style as a bullet journal, I have an index so that each item can be looked up quickly. You can see what I mean from these photos. Quite geeky/nerdy eh? Hehe! I would love to carry on with getting this set up because I really think I need the memory jog that it gives me.

As I write this there is only a week of May left and we now have warmer weather so I’m getting to wear Summer clothes, which lovely! I think I have a pretty good amount of Summer wear, but time will tell as we get past May and on with the rest of Summer. Living in the UK though I always have a need for plenty of clothes that suit cooler in-between sort of weather and some of my sewing plans will be focusing on that. After all…don’t our Summers usually just consist of two hot days followed by a thunderstorm??!

And on that note…I’ll say ‘til next time…byee!