So Me-Made May is finished! I guess I will be glad to get back those 30 seconds of photo-taking most mornings (I only missed one day), but it was kinda fun to document my gradual shift into maternity wear.
Some outfits were fond farewells.
Others were old standbys that will probably see me all the way through.
There was even one new maternity/nursing specific piece sundress.
Partway through the month I did a major wardrobe edit, resigning a sizable chunk of my (sizable) wardrobe to storage. This freed up closet-space and cut down on the frustration of digging around dozens of items that just don’t fit right now (frankly, some of them may never fit again but I’ll make that call in a year or two). But it was very weird to have only a few options left to get me through the rest of the month. I mean, I still did it and there are three or four pieces I didn’t even wear during the month, but it was weird.
Now that the month of peacocking is over, I’m excited to feel a little more relaxed about outfit repeats. There are dresses that I love that I won’t likely get more than a couple more wearing a in—I want to squeeze those out as soon as possible, without worrying about how long since I last wore them. I never meant to be a subscriber to the “no wardrobe repeats” mentality, but when I have as many clothes as I do now, ordinarily at least, I like to rotate and give everything a turn. But right now I just want to wear my favourites to death before they don’t fit.
That being said, I am definitely planning lots of dorky bump documentation. Selfies weren’t a thing last time I was pregnant, and I have only a very few photos of my first pregnancies.
Winter, 2000, probably about four months pregnant
Much as I might wish it, this does not document my everyday wear in my first pregnancy. (Though it does illustrate the chronic too-short-sleeve issue that led to me sewing my wardrobe in the first place.)
June, 2003. This was taken the day before Syo was born, actually while I was in the very early stages of labour.
Nor does it give me a record of bump growth. Not that my previous bumps were truly massive… I’m pretty sure the present twin bump will dwarf them both. Probably by the end of next month. Anyway, I’m thinking a weekly record, for my own curiosity if nothing else.
You can find the full record of all the Me Made May photos here, outtakes and derp-faces and all, or find it on my Instagram for a slightly more curated feed, with day-by-day commentary.
Anyway, I’m so glad I did it! What a fun way to grapple with my current wardrobe situation.
Which brings my to my current pledge:
Given the above, I’ve often been feeling like what I pull out of the closet is either not creating a coherent look, or that the look I’m ending up with isn’t quite what I intended (or that I don’t even know what I intended.)
On top of that, sewing class samples for my teaching has been putting quite a few pieces into my wardrobe that were picked more with an eye to what can be sewn from the kind of fabrics the quilt-shop where I teach stocks, and to a lesser extent what is “hot”, than to thoughtful wardrobe-building for me. I’m not quite sure how to resolve this conundrum, though I could of course just give myself permission to not wear them. But I do like them.
So yeah, I need to think. To evaluate. Decide how I feel both about the current trends and how they fit with how I want to look and how I actually look. Me Made May may not solve this for me. But I’m hoping it will at least give me some more information about where I’m at. I’m planning to document on Instagram, probably via stories, and with any luck I’ll manage a summary post here in June.
Tanit-Isis Sews 