We all made it to the end of Me Made May! I have to say, I struggled this year. Last May the weather in Nova Scotia was really nice, but this year it has sucked. Majorly. Which means that it became very clear that I have a lot of me made dresses but not a lot of separates that I actually want to wear on a regular basis. My pledge was to wear at least one item of me made clothing every day, and to not buy any new fabric. I achieved the first part, and on the second part I was very close to success. Below are all the outfits I wore this month (not necessarily in order – if you want to see the real order you can look at my Instagram story highlight).
As you can see, I wore the same pair of Ginger jeans nine times. This is mainly because it was under 10C outside the majority of the time, and it turns out I don’t have that much me made clothing to wear when I want to feel cozy. I have three other pairs of me made jeans, but I didn’t wear any of them. One of them is a pair of Deer & Doe Safran jeans that I never blogged about, one is my new Megan Nielsen Dawn jeans, and the other is the test version I made when first making jeans (using the Ginger jeans pattern). And I’ve come to a conclusion. I just don’t like high-waisted jeans. I never want to wear them. I don’t think I’ve worn the Safran jeans once, and I made them more than a year ago. Same with the Dawn jeans, although I made those much more recently. So I’m just going to make more pairs of Ginger jeans because I already have the fit down and wear them all the time and have 4-5 pieces of stretch denim in my stash.
Speaking of, I did a HUGE stash organization this month. It was related to my resolution not to buy fabric (for the record, the fabric I bought was to make a friend a garment as a birthday gift and I had nothing in my stash that was suitable). My sewing area was CHAOS and all of my fabric was in opaque containers solely divided between “garment fabric” and “quilting fabric”, which was becoming not particularly useful as a system. I bought a ton of clear containers from IKEA of various sizes and went to work. I divided the garment fabrics into more useful categories according to substrate, had one bin devoted to big quilting cotton pieces, one for quilting batting, and two medium quilting ones for cool scraps and warm scraps (in terms of colours). I also got 8 small ones to have assembled fabric & patterns for upcoming projects and put labels inside all of the containers. I also moved most of them up onto the top of my sewing area so I could see everything and “shop my stash”. The whole thing made me so inspired to sew the fabric I already have. And it made me realize I’ve inadvertently been hoarding Cone Mills denim, so I need to sew it! You can see some photos of this whole organizing process on Instagram here.
Another area of my wardrobe I noticed was lacking was me made tops that I actually want to wear on a regular basis. The Tessuti Alice top is the biggest workhorse for me right now, so during this month I made an additional one (the dark green Nani Iro one above). I also made a list of nine top patterns I want to try after scouring the database on The Foldline. The patterns are: 1) Tessuti Ruby top, 2) Jalie 3245, 3) Charlotte Kan Pocket T, 4) Tessuti Mandy Boat Tee, 5) Sew Liberated Strata top, 6) Tessuti Isla top, 7) Ready to Sew Jude, 8) Pattern Fantastique Calyx Smock, and 9) Sew House 7 Merlo Field Tee. As you can see, I’ve already made the Strata top (the rust linen above) and I really love it. I’ve worn it a couple times already. I have the patterns for the Jalie, the Mandy, and the Merlo all printed out but not assembled yet, so when I want to make a new top I’ll try out one of those.
Overall, I think this May has been really good for me to find the holes in my wardrobe when I’m forced to not wear me made dresses (since I prefer to wear them without tights). It also lead me to do a ruthless clear-out of my shirts last night because my closet was so crowded that I couldn’t access the stuff I actually wear on a regular basis. I think I’m going to continue my fabric buying ban, because I am super inspired by the fabrics I have and have been enjoying sewing with the things I had in my stash.
How did everyone’s Me Made May go? Was it effective? Exhausting? Fun? Inspiring? Did you fall off the bandwagon?
Just wanted to say Thank you for posting what kind of fabric you used for each of your makes. It is so helpful to see the item and how it flows (or not) and what it is!
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No problem at all! I’m glad it’s helpful for at least one other person! 🙂