It’s the last day of Self-stitched September. And you know, I am a little bit sad! It’s the navy dress again today.

Tomorrow I’m going to share a few thoughts on the challenge as a whole, but overwhelmingly I think it was not that big a challenge – i.e., it didn’t feel boringly repetitive, or like I was wearing wildly inappropriate things just for the sake of wearing them. (There has been more repetition than I’ve shown on this blog – I haven’t tended to post about duplicate garments/outfits.)

One reason for the challenge being easy is well illustrated by this dress: it’s basic and easy to wear. Because I was thinking about doing Self-stitched September for a few months prior, I did some strategising to make sure I would actually have enough handmade items to get me through the month. And since this wasn’t Make Yourself a Whole New Wardrobe September, I pinpointed just a few things to make which should be versatile enough to wear a lot, easily. I planned these projects in advance, budgeted for them, and was picky about finding exactly the right fabric.

Although I do tend to plan clothing purchases in advance most of the time, this very purposeful planning, budgeting, and careful limitation (keeping it within what I could reasonably make in the time I had before September began) made for an enormously satisfying process. It also meant that wearing a few things repeatedly was pretty easy, and most of the time I genuinely liked what I was wearing. The moral is: I should do this type of planning more often, because I think it leads to a more cohesive wardrobe of better quality and which I enjoy more.