Tag Archives: bullet journal

Me Made May: What the data shows

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Me Made May bullet journal habit tracker spread

In case anyone ever wondered whether I’m more into selfies or data, it’s absolutely no contest. I only took one proper #ootd photo for the month, and despite my dread of selfies I had probably about a 60% success rate of snapping a quick mirror pic in the morning, as backup. But I was 100% successful at keeping up the tracker I set up in my mini bullet journal for the month, and it was really interesting to me to see how it developed. In case it’s interesting to you, here are the results:

— I wore something me-made on 21 of the 31 days.

— The percentages of me-made for each day’s outfit averaged out to 46%. Data-fan Julia rightly commented on my earlier post that there’s a logical flaw in this column, as 1 me-made in a 2-part outfit would be valued at 50% while 1 me-made in a 3-part outfit would only be valued at 33%. I was curious to calculate it anyway. And I also gave myself small percentages of credit for garments that were modified by me in some way, such as 5% for the pockets added to a pair of RTW pants. So the me-modifieds factor into this particular calculation.

Me Made May bullet journal habit tracker - #ootd outfits list

— There were a total of 69 garment instances in the daily outfit listing, not counting shoes, and they broke down as 31 Me-Made, 13 Hybrid, 25 Ready-to-Wear. This is a more accurate tally of what percentage is me-made, and that’s 45% MM / 20% H / 35% RTW. Pretty sure it’s a statistical coincidence that these two ways of calculating the MM percentage came in at 46% and 45%. But regardless, it’s mighty close to my original estimate of 50%.

Me Made May bullet journal habit tracker wear counts

— I wore a total of 27 unique garments during the month, 9 of which were me-made (mostly pants) and 4 of which I had some hand in: the army shirtjacket refashion, the State Smock I dyed, a tee I screenprinted and the black linen pants I added pockets to. That’s 13. The other 14 were purchased — so again, just under 50%. (Note that on weekend days where I only wore exercise clothes or all-day pajamas, I did list the pajamas in the outfit rundown, in parentheses, and indicated which were me-made, but I did not include any purely pj garments in the wear count.)

— Most worn garments were my jeans (which gave way by mid-month), my ivory canvas wide-leg pants (2018) and my black muscle tee (2016) — the latter two being my hardest working me-mades, so … no surprises there.

But what was really interesting was being conscious as I was getting dressed of what parts of my spring-into-summer clothes are homemade and … not. If I were to do this in winter, I’d have on a handknit sweater pretty much every day, so it’d be a question of whether the bottom half was also me-made or RTW. I still have a pronounced dearth of tops for this time of year, and what I do have is largely RTW, so if I wasn’t wearing me-made pants, I was likely not wearing any me-made at all. That tops issue is one I’m really working to address, and this strengthened my resolve to focus my sewing energy on that particular gap in my closet.

Me Made May bullet journal habit tracker

As always, I loved designing and maintaining this tracker, and I learned enough doing this little exercise that I think I will do it again in different seasons to see how the results compare!

(Notebook from Fringe Supply Co.)

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PREVIOUSLY in Me Made Bay: The bujo way

Me-Made May the Bujo way

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Me-Made May bullet journal habit tracker

Hi, my name is Karen and I’m a data nerd. I love information design, bullet journaling and long walks on the beach at sunset.

But seriously, here’s how I’ve set up the aforementioned Me-Made May tracker in my mini bullet journal. In designing the layout, I wanted to track how often I wear me-mades, the average percentage I wear as a proportion of any outfit, plus literally what garments I wore and which category they fall into. I couldn’t bring myself to make it just me-made vs ready-to-wear, since some things literally fall in between — like second-hand jeans, an upcycled State Smock (especially if I dyed it), a refashion, a RTW tee I screenprinted, etc. So there’s MM (me-made), H (hybrid) and RTW along the right side of the tracker for breaking each outfit into its parts. And then along the right of the spread there’s the Wear Count. I can fit about 30 garments into the page, which should be more than enough. When I set that 20×30 challenge for myself a couple of Octobers ago, I wound up wearing not quite 20, I think. But instead of pre-picking them, or necessarily enforcing a limit, I want to allow for that to take shape somewhat naturally. Of course, there’s some serious Observer Effect at play here, since this will make me more self-conscious as I’m getting dressed about whether I’m wearing me-made and what and how often. But it’s more game than science experiment, so that’s cool.

Me-Made May bullet journal wear count tracker

If I keep it up, I’ll do the following and share the results —

TO BE TALLIED:
– the number of days I wore something me-made
– the average percentage of MM worn
– the total instances of MM | H | RTW items
– what garments I wore
– how many of those garments are me-made (denoted by a bullet in the list)

(Dot-grid memo book from Fringe Supply Co.)

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PREVIOUSLY in Me-Made May: My 2019 pledge (and more)