As ever, it’s good to look back over the excitement of Me Made May with a bit of analysis and clear-headed reflection.
My original pledge was to wear me-made during the month (the low-hanging fruit of my challenge tree – tick!), and to post daily outfit pictures (harder work, but also – tick!). As the first couple of days of May went by two additional elements crept into this part of my challenge – wearing make up (I think I did for all the weekdays, and most of the weekends) and wearing me-made jewellery (again, I think I did for most days, with just a couple of weekend can’t-be-bothered days), so although they weren’t official pledges, tick and tick!
Here’s the final round up image from my instagram profile.
The final part of my pledge was to comment on other people’s MMM posts, and I set myself the goal of 10 comments per day. As I mentioned in an early round-up post, this was harder than I thought. I started with comments on my friends’ posts, but that was easy pickings again. My intention was to reach out and participate more in the wider community, so I put on my big girl pants and started commenting on complete strangers’ posts/outfits. It was hard work, because it meant spending quite a bit of time each evening going through all the MMM posts in my feed, and finding new people’s posts to comment on. Sometimes my comments were just a row of heart-eyes emojis, especially for non-English instagrammers, but it turns out, people still appreciate that! I was following the #memademay2021 hashtag, but I’m certain that Instagram wasn’t showing me everything in that stream. Sometimes I was refreshing my feed time & time again, to get some new posts I could like and comment on! It was a great way to get to know other sewers/knitters/makers on instagram, and I’ve got a whole new set of people I’m following. Technically there were days that I didn’t meet my 10 comments, but I did enough extra on other days for it all to even out, so I’m counting it as my final (and official) tick.
This year I discovered and followed the #memademayplus hashtag. There were lots of plus-size hashtags for MMM, and I feel like I should maybe have followed more of them. I’m glad that I’ve started to be aware of it. It meant I got to see a whole load more people who look more like me. I love seeing how people with my sort of shape make their clothing work for them. A lot of instagrammers were adding, not just the pattern they used for their outfit, but the size range that those patterns came in, which is heartening for us curvier ladies. Some were choosing not to @ or # pattern companies and patterns that weren’t size-inclusive, which is fair enough – why support companies that don’t see us as part of their market? Yeah, yeah, I know all the reasons why it’s hard for a small pattern company (and large ones too) to create extra sizes (at both ends of the range), and if a company wants to stick to safe medium sizes, that’s fine, but grading is a pain in the posterior, and I’ll think carefully before spending £10-20 on a pattern I’m going to have to completely re-create.
Which leads back to my own wardrobe thoughts from this year’s MMM. I didn’t want to do too many repeats. Which is rather ridiculous, because left to my own devices, I’m perfectly happy to wear clothes two days in a row, never mind two weeks apart. But that’s all part of the Outward Facing aspect of MMM. The weather here in the South-East of the UK was pretty cold and wet for most of May, and it was really only in the last couple of days that we got any sunshine and warmth. This had quite an impact on my choice of daily outfits. With previous MMMs, I’ve been able to transition from early Spring to late Spring to Summer, which has allowed me to use a wider range of my wardrobe. But this year, it was all jumpers and cardigans.
I’ve also realised that I’m now much more into dresses than separates. I did wear some separates, but I always wanted to be wearing dresses! I just didn’t have enough winter-wearable ones. This realisation, made quite early in May, led to me making the two new dresses in my wardrobe, the black & ivory one, and the stripy teal one. I know MMM isn’t necessarily about making more, but I’m really glad that it inspired me to do some more sewing, because lockdown has been a real sew-jo killer. It’s nice to be creative again, and to make some inroads into my fabric stash.
Finally, there have been a lot of lovely outfits going past my eyes throughout the whole month, and some items/patterns have found their way onto my list of things I’d like to make/use/wear:
- Wrap dresses – It started with close fitting Diana Von Furstenberg style ones, but then I started noticing quite a few lovely BHL Hannah dresses, and they do them in an inclusive size range, so this one is now on my radar as a pattern to investigate sooner rather than later.
- Plain cotton shift dresses – To showcase lovely prints – and I’ve got plenty of those in deep stash. I’ve just bought the SOI Ultimate Shift Dress (despite it not yet being in their inclusive size range, so it will need a shedload of grading, sigh).
- Big floofy dresses. There were lots of different ones, but generally they were fairly loose fitting dresses with an empire line and gathered skirt from below the bust. I saw a lot of Hinterland dresses from Sew Liberated and I might go for that as a pattern, or I could wing it and self-draft something. The BHL Hannah would also work for this as well.
- The Pona Jacket from Helen’s Closet, as a casual blazer.
- Swiss dot cotton – because if you have to work with plain colours it’s nice to have some textural interest.
I’m repeating to myself very severely: “These are not plans, they are ideas and inspiration. Do not feel obligated!”
So that concludes a, for me, successful Me Made May. Zoe you are a total star for keeping this tradition going, and keeping it fresh and inspirational and fun for us all. Thank you!
Béa's Sewing Adventures 