30/04/2018

Me-Made-May Outfit Tracker Template

As I noted in my Me-Made-May 2018 Pledge, I wanted to put together an "outfit-tracker" to keep track of what I wear every day, and how I feel in each outfit.  So!  I put together a GoogleDoc spreadsheet to keep track of everything.




If you would like to download the template, I've made it available at this link: http://bit.ly/2HYLC9d

If you do use it and share it, all I ask is that you tag me @kalliesews, or give me appropriate credit as I built it from scratch 🤓.  Thanks!  If you have any questions or comments, leave a comment here and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.  Happy #MMMay18!

26/04/2018

Me-Made-May 2018


It's the most wonderful time of the year for the online sewing community - Me-Made-May!!  I'm home sick from work today, and finally have some time to put together this post!  It's going to be a long one, so feel free to skip down to the bottom for my actual pledge.  However, I think reading through my thoughts on my MMMay challenge will hopefully help to explain how I chose my pledge this year.

This will be my third year participating in MMMay, and my handmade wardrobe has grown by leaps and bounds since my first year participating (2016 summary, 2017 summary).  While having a substantial me-made wardrobe kind of makes the whole "wearing me-mades" part of MMMay easier, it put me in a bit of a pickle deciding how to actually challenge myself this year.  MMMay is meant to be a personal challenge with your me-made wardrobe (as discussed here on Zoe's blog) and not a photo challenge where you post an outfit-selfie every day on instagram.  I already wear mostly me-mades every day now, so that really isn't challenging for me any more.  I put a quick call out on my instagram stories and I got some feedback from some of my followers/ Ottawa sewing buddies for some interesting challenges:

  • Putting together a handmade capsule wardrobe for each week or for the entire month
  • Documenting which me-mades actually get worn
  • Less repeats and wear lesser-worn items
  • Refashion some older garments or something from a thrift store

I will be perfectly honest - I actually think capsule wardrobes are kind of dumb.  Absolutely NO offence to people who love them (or to the person who suggested it, I do appreciate your suggestion!), I have just never understood the point of 'curating' your closet down to so few pieces.  Variety is the spice of life! (says the person with an absurd amount of blue items in their closet).  I don't like being limited to certain outfits and I really love sewing and integrating new things into my wardrobe to work with older items.  I'm constantly thinking of new outfit ideas and how different things I have made could work together.  Now, I TOTALLY get the point of having everything in your wardrobe go together perfectly, and I've definitely started to try to focus on that with my sewing.  BUT the whole capsule wardrobe thing just isn't for me. 

When it comes to refashioning items... for whatever reason, this is just something that has never really piqued my interest?  I do have some older skirts that I made when I was just learning to sew (and a gathered skirt was the best thing I could do) that no longer fit, but the fabric is still in great shape.  The skirts are long enough and there is enough fabric in them that I could definitely squeeze out a top or something from them... this just isn't top of my list at the moment.  While I love the idea, I don't think it's something I'm going to work into my MMMay challenge this year.

As for documenting which items actually get worn and working in lesser-worn items, this is something I can really get behind.  I know I have a whole bunch of me-mades that have been languishing in the back of my closet or the bottom of my drawers.  They get worn sometimes but they're not necessarily part of my regular rotation.  Or, things that I wore a couple times and decided they just didn't work for me.  What I think would be super helpful is to create a database of all my me-mades and throughout the month, track how often each of them gets worn.  I could also keep track of how I felt at the end of the day in each outfit (and if I get any compliments on an outfit that day).  I also still have some RTW items in my wardrobe that I have had for a while (or basics like camisoles, bras, and undies) that are starting to get tired and need to be replaced soon - I can document these and plan ahead to replace them.  SO - now that I've written out all those paragraphs and figured things out... here's my (kinda long) pledge for Me-Made-May 2018:

I, Kallie Auld, sign up to participate in Me-Made-May 2018.  
Over the course of May 2018, I will strive to wear all of my seasonally-appropriate me-mades.  I also pledge to work in older me-mades that tend to get less (or no) wear, and to track what I wear every day how how I feel in each outfit.  Items that go unworn will be either refashioned, given to friends, or donated.

There it is!  I'm hoping this is actually a good challenge for me, and by the end of the month I'll have a better organized me-made wardrobe and more room in my closet and drawers for the things I have planned.  I'm also going to try to put together a database of sorts of all the items in my wardrobe, and set up a page where I can input what I wear every day.  I'm probably going to document each day on my Instagram as per usual and post weekly updates here on the blog.  At the end of the month, I'll post a summary of how things went and hopefully share the details of my clothing database.  

As with every year, I can't wait to see what everyone is wearing this month.  Best of luck with all your personal challenges!