Reflections on Me Made May 2020

Me Made May

Me Made May is over for another year. This was the fourth time I’ve done it and I think it was the hardest.

Me Made May is an annual event which you can read more about here, where you wear your me-made clothes during the month of May, as a way of wearing them more often, or in a different way. It’s a personal challenge that’s meant to be fun.

I wondered, like some, if Me-Made-May was frivolous vanity in the middle of a pandemic and if it was a good idea to do. However, I thought it might shift me out of a rut and maybe it would be fun. It turned out I enjoyed seeing other people’s sewing projects and made some new friends too.

Here’s the pledge I made:

  1. Wear me-made clothes every day, preferably styled in an interesting and untried way, but if not that’s okay.
  2. Put more thought and effort into getting dressed every day, because, quite frankly, sartorial standards have been slipping around here.
  3. Wear the zero waste samples (all me-made) from my book Zero Waste Sewing, which are just sitting here in a box now that all book talks and workshops are cancelled.  I wouldn’t let them be part of my wardrobe because I needed them for show-and-tell, but now I will wear them without reservation.

Here’s a gallery. Mostly I took photos outside – you can see by the sky we had absolutely stunning days nearly every day of May, a bizarre discrepancy between the weather and world events.


Did I fulfill the pledge? Yes, I did wear me-mades every day and tried to put in thought and effort. As with every year, the season breaks around the beginning of May, suddenly leaving the sundresses redundant. It takes a while to get into the mindset of wintery clothes but by the end of May I’d found some old favourites and discovered new ones.

The third part of the pledge, to wear the zero waste samples, I did on many days. I don’t have them now – an opportunity which I thought I’d lost due to covid-19 is now possible: they’ll be on display from this Saturday at Clare Art House (details here).

Why was it so hard to do Me-Made-May this year? It seemed like a huge imposition to put thought into getting dressed each day. Usually I quite like lying in bed in the mornings deciding what to wear, but summoning the mental energy or even caring about it took effort. However, I’m glad I persevered.

Thank you Zoe Edwards for organising Me-Made-May.

Cheers!

4 Comments

  1. Fadanista on June 4, 2020 at 11:25 am

    Loved all your makes, especially the zero waste ones!

    • lizhaywood on June 4, 2020 at 11:57 am

      Thanks Sue!

  2. Salju Jose on July 27, 2020 at 10:30 pm

    Hello Liz , Am so interested to see your zero waste garments. I was searching for inspirations and ideas as I was hopping into exploring sustainable and Zero waste draped garments, after more than three decades of my experience in the fashion industry.
    So good to read your articles and see your brilliant work here..

    • lizhaywood on July 28, 2020 at 9:02 am

      Hi Saliju, I hope you find it as fun and as interesting as I have. You’ve got all the skills to jump right in there 🙂
      I haven’t explored zero waste draping but I think it’s got lots of potential.

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