Join Me: Self-Stitched-September!!!

This is it! The last day of Me-Made-May. I know I am not alone in saying that it has been an incredibly enjoyable, interesting, inspirational and fun experience, made incalculably more so because of the (dare I use the term) community that has formed through the Flickr group and participants blogs.

So, what next? Well, there are some interesting sew-alongs springing up as a result of some participants’ desire to continue the supportive aspects of this challenge. Check out the Me-Made-May Flickr Group’s discussion threads for more details.

For my part, I am also reluctant to discontinue my involvement with the Me-Made-May support group and the direct contact with many of these awesome peops. So I’ve come up with another challenge that I hope will appeal to them and others. Those of you who may have picked up on my predisposition towards alliteration made have seen this one coming, but I would like to present....... Self-Stitched-September! The title is a bit more of a mouthful than its cousin Me-Made-May, but effective enough I believe. In case you were wondering, I did consider Self-Sewn-September but realised that moniker would prohibit the inclusion of knitted or crocheted items, which would be a tragedy.

I think it’s important to retain the open aspect of the Me-Made-May terms of use, in the sense that individuals should be free to determine what will form a challenge for themselves. But I have created a template to use which will hopefully make it easier than last time to declare your personal challenge strategy:

'I, (insert name here and blog address if you have one), sign up as a participant of Self-Stitched-September. I endeavour to wear (enter ‘only’ or a number) handmade (add ‘and refashioned’ if you wish) item(s) of clothing (add ‘or accessories/ jewellery’ if you wish) every day for the duration of September 2010'.

I really hope that those who have participated in Me-Made-May and enjoyed doing so will come on board for this next challenge, and equally I would LOVE to expand the participation to include more crafters. The last challenge had approximately 80 active participants (plus some lovely supporters and well wishers). Let’s see if this time round we can break through the big 100! I will create a new Flickr group by the end of the week so, as with Me-Made-May, we can enjoy each others’ photos and use the discussions threads any way members see fit. Watch out for an announcement on that.

In the meantime, if you would like to sign-up, please copy and paste the template into the comments section of this post and fill in/edit to suit your personal aims. Don’t worry, you won’t be held to this! If you wish to change your aims and do something different when September rocks around, it’s no problem. Then, if you so desire, paste your personalised template with any additions or qualifiers you wish to make onto your own blog if you have one: this is your statement of intent! And please include a link to this post so your lovely readers can find out more and perhaps become participants themselves if it interests them. If you do not wish to or cannot participate yourself but consider this challenge interesting, a linky-dink would also be greatly appreciated to help us get over the 100 participant target! So, who’s in?!