Me-Made-May: Days 30 & 31: The End

So here we are, the final installment of my personal Me-Made-May documentation. Day 30:

Me-made Ruby shorts, nautical blouse and pants. This combination of garments was dreamed up whilst trying to create photographable outfits out of a jumble of separates for my recent photo shoot project. I thought it might feel a little too pin-up for a sloppy Sunday, but the blouse is fitted but not tight and the cotton sateen is so soft that is doesn't really feel like a blouse. This is definately an outfit that reflects how I feel a lot of the time these days.

Day 31:

Me-made skirt, cotton blouse and pants. As with the final day of Me-Made-March, I added a new garment into the mix at the 11th hour. It was great to have this new skirt and made me wear the blouse tucked in, which is something I've never done so somehow it too sunsequently felt like a new garment! I devote a post to the skirt in a near future as it was a sewing triumph in many ways and I'd like to share with you this particular learning curve.

I spent most of the last day of Me-Made-May in high street clothing shops doing trend research, which I always feel is a little ironic (and at times possibly hypocritical even, but let's leave that debate for another day) seeing as I wear so much handmade clothes and was in the process of rounding off a whole month wearing exclusively handmade things. Funnily enough, this outfit made me feel the more at ease pretending to shop than I have for a very long time. Perhaps that's because this skirt could be perceived as being quite 'on-trend'? Whatever. But I must say that this final outfit was one of my favourites from the whole month, and if wasn't for the desire to expand my clothing selection for the tail end of the challenge, I may not have got round to making the skirt at all.

There are a million things I could write about regarding this challenge, about the awesome people and blogs I have discovered or about the knowledge, inspiration and support that has spread because of it. What I will say is that there are some really interesting and thought-provoking analysis and reflections going on round about now on participants blogs and the Flickr group about what can been taken from the Me-Made-May experience. If you have found this challenge of interest, I would encourage you to seek some of them out. I really do want to thank all those who participated and everyone who left nice comments, y'all are amazing!

On a personal level, I believe I succeeded in making my own efforts bigger, brighter and more fun. Of course, the warmer weather facilitated a lot of that, but I really pushed myself to create more varied and colourful clothing combinations. In fact, I somehow managed to only repeat one outfit the whole month! I don't think I realised how many separates I have. I also made more of an effort with my hair and made sure I wore makeup more often, two things that I know have a direct relationship to how I feel during the day. Funny the changes you make when you realise more people are watching! Predictably there were lots of things I had planned to create before and during May, like a dressing gown, that might have been useful and/or provided more variety, but I got by just fine without them.

By now you may have noticed that I have thrown down another challenge: Self-Stitched-September. I have many thoughts and plans regarding this and the other challenges I have recently signed up for as a result of my experiences of Me-Made-May, but I'll save all that jazz for another day. I must admit it took me a few minutes this morning to realise that I was 'allowed' to wear non-handmade things today, and that actual made me quite sad. Long live the handmade revolution!