Following on from my recent posts about style etc, it seemed only appropriate to do a summary of my experience this Me Made May. I have always loved May and MMM has only added to that feeling. Whilst it does make me spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about clothes during the month, it also makes me expand the rotation of my clothes and reach further back into my wardrobe to dig out something that hasn’t seen the light of day for months.

This year has been particularly enlightening as I have worn items I wouldn’t normally think to wear for the school run etc and combined them with things that I previously hadn't considered. Some simple combinations like a button-down shirt with jeans as well as more not-entirely-sure-I-don't-look-ridiculous combinations of huge tent dresses and my Ginger Jeans. But they mostly worked, I loved experimenting, and I felt great about tapping into my personal style and not just mindlessly reaching for jeans and a tee.

I have loved documenting this as well. What this says about me as a vain narcissist I’m not sure, but having a record of what I’ve worn each day, is definitely helpful in remembering outfits I've enjoyed wearing and putting together things I wouldn’t normally wear and so maximising the wearability of my handmade clothes. I found that I am still wearing outfits that I first discovered last May that have become central to my wardrobe.

I’ve also found that I should make more button downs as I love to wear them with jeans but that I’m not actually a jeans and tee person. Jeans and dresses, jeans and blouses, jeans and tunics, jeans and shirts. Yes, yes yes and yes. So those are the things I should concentrate on making rather than ruing the fact I can’t be bothered to sew a t-shirt.

I’m sad that the weather was mostly diabolical (seriously I can move back to England for spring time coolness and rain) during May and I didn't get to exercise my full army of summery dresses, but actually that has also been useful in tackling that between season clothing no-mans land that is always so painful and makes me feel like a 13 year old trying to find her fashion thing.

In terms of my pledge, even though my Archer shirt probably wasn’t the most appropriate for climbing a (small) mountain (although I’m not sure how much I care about having all the right technical gear any more) I wore at least one me-made piece of clothing every single day of May. Some days I was fully clad in me-made gear (save for the undies), others just one item (it's amazing what having a handmade coat can do for your ability to wear me-made every day!) and others an evening out of course warranted an excuse for a me-made wardrobe change.

Whilst I didn't pledge that I wouldn't repeat outfits (how many negatives there?) I tried to limit how often I wore the same thing, in order to see how I could increase the wearability of some of my creations.

As for the second part of my pledge: as expected I haven't done nearly as much sewing as usual - my sad nightly sewing habits were put to one side to welcome visitors from the homeland and actually have a life for a change. But I did manage to sew a couple of things that fit into the everyday wearables category (a casual skirt and a shirt-dress) those items that are more easy going, more casual, and basically involve less silk for mud-antics in the park.

All in all it’s been a highly self-indulgent yet fun and worthwhile process to go through again and makes me proud that I can happily wear something I’ve made each day and feel like I’m representing me; not just wearing something I made for the sake of fulfilling a commitment to a rather random pledge.

Thanks Zoe!

How was Me Made May for you? Did you bother? Do you get as evangelical about it as I do?

See you soon x

(ps: the pics aren't all of the things I wore in May, just those that I got particular satisfaction from ...)