Me Made May - a celebration of me-mades (?)

I am one of these people who anticipate May since March. For the past few years May was a month for celebrating all the self made garments and reflecting on the sewing process in the year that passed. May is also the month during which blogs discuss broader aspects of sewing rather than publishing only posts with new finished projects. So this year I anticipated reading and watching pictures capturing the dynamic aspects of clothes and how they work in real-life, outside the "finished garment" posts. I anticipated reading posts about the successes and failures in sewing, and how these experiences affect the "to-sew" lists. 

I was a bit disappointing reading that many of the big bloggers decided to ditch this experience. I know the sewing community develops over time and it is true that many of us wear our me-mades on a daily basis anyway. But circumscribing me-mades to finished-garment posts takes the point out of making and writing about our sewing, and makes sewing similar to RTW where the only job a garment has is to look good and picture-ready.

The lack of documentation in MMM15 reflects a bigger change in sewing blogs over the past two years - the easier patterns are to sew, and the greater frequency with which patterns are released makes sewing more like fast fashion. Maddie posted her take on that exactly one yer ago, during May. This change is also apparent in the photo shoots presenting finished garments - sewing photography becomes as important as sewing itself. Much like in RTW.

The growing sewing community is amazing, and it is because of these changes that we are able to sew most of our clothes. The quality and detailed information that comes with the new patterns helps us all conquer sewing garments we would otherwise skip such as jeans. But these changes could also make us less aware of the actual job our me-mades have in the real world, which is to be comfortable and pretty outside the settings of the photo-shoots and blog posts.

I wish that while the community continues to grow and new patterns are released, we will remember to reflect on the process more often and continue the discussion over garments long after they were first photographed.