It’s that time of year again. The time when sewists the world over celebrate their acievements by proudly wearing their handmade garments every day in a bid to meet the challenge of….
Have you signed up yet? What do you mean no?! What are you playing at?! Get yourself over to Zoe’s blog right now and take the pledge!
Of course, if you’re anything like me, then by about week 3, you’ll be resorting to increasingly bizarre outfit combos in a bid to meet your self imposed criteria. And by about week 2 (for me anyway) the bigger challenge becomes actually photographing yourself daily. BUT, it’s a great challenge in so many ways…..
- It shows you where the gaps in your handmade wardrobe are.
- It kinda forces you to dig out everything handmade that you have in your arsenal, and re-evaluate it. Does it even work for you? Why on earth did you make THAT.
- When you look at older handmade items, it can remind you how much you’ve improved since. (I think we all need to remind ourselves of that once in a while…since us sewists gravitate more naturally to self criticism than congratulations.)
- It can help you to refine your choice of silhouttes. I don’t know about you, but looking back at photos of past challenges REALLY helped me to work out what suited me and more importantly….what absolutely DID NOT! Do you ever look at an outfit photo and thing “I’m sure that looked better in the mirror!” Me? All the time!
- I also tend to make more during a Me Made challenge than I otherwise would. At the start of the month I tend to think “yeah, piece of cake” then half way through I tend to whip up a few pieces to give me more options in the morning…right about the time a kind of low level panic sets in because I’m running out of outfit ideas!
- I put alot more effort and thought into how I look during a Me Made month. Not only my outfits, but I’ll do my hair and make up every day. Whereas most weeks there’ll be a few days that see me doing the school run sans make up (sunglasses are an essential disguise to stop me scaring the other children), in a questionable outfit, and with slightly unruly orange hair. You’d think a simple bob would be simple to maintain wouldn’t you? Nope! My hair, when left to dry naturally is seriously scary. So a Me Made month just gives me the extra kick up the arse I need to put the effort in, which is no bad thing!
What about you? You taking part? Are you a first timer or a “veteran”? What have you learnt from past challenges and what does a Me Made challenge force you to do that you wouldn’t ordinarily do?
