Do You Wear What You Sew?

Now this may seem like a silly question. But I know for a fact that I have several home-sewn garments in my closet that I NEVER EVER wear. When I get up in the wee hours of the morning when it is still dark outside and I am faced with the conundrum that is my closet, I will more often than not choose to wear something store-bought instead of things I made myself. But why?

Picture taken and modified from dailymail.co.uk

I find this very frustrating. Here I am sewing my heart out day in and day out and still I choose to wear things I haven’t made myself. I’ve tried to have a good look at the things I sew to find out what it is that makes me not wear certain items and I came up with a couple of reasons.

The first and most obvious reason is that a garment just didn’t turn out the way I expected it to: wonky seems, a bad choice of material, a bad fit, less than perfect hemming or strangely misplaced and differently sized buttonholes. The list could go on. I suppose there is nothing one can do to prevent this. That’s just one of the casualties of learning how to sew. As much as I wished that everything I make is a feat of perfection it just doesn’t happen that way. Here is one such example of a dress I made last summer, which just doesn't fit me very well and which had an absolutely terrible hem and wonky seams. I eventually took the dress apart to salvage the material and made a blouse from it.

Another reason why I often don’t wear things I've made is because I want to save what I made for a special occasion and don’t feel that I can wear it on a daily basis. I choose the same boring pair of jeans and tee in the morning instead of wearing my own hand-made stuff which I sewed for precisely the reason that I don’t have to wear that same old boring pair of jeans and tee in the morning. Now how does that make any sense? I guess wearing things I have made myself can make me feel strangely self-conscious at times. I sometimes feel like this when I wear my Raspberry dress: Is the color not too bold? Is the hem straight? Is it ironed well? Are the seams not coming apart?

Lastly, and this is the most frustrating reason: I don’t wear the things I made because they are not actually my style. Things don’t go with my wardrobe or just look silly on me. Style is not something that seems to come automatically with increased sewing knowledge but seems to be something entirely separate. Just because I can sew something perfectly doesn’t mean what I sew will look good on me. The navy blue jacket I made last year is a prime example. It's a perfectly well-sewn jacket, even sporting bound buttonholes, but still I never wear it, becasue it doesn't go with anything I have.

My new plan of action is to thoroughly think about each project I have planned beforehand: Is it my style? Will I wear something like this? Will this fit me? What kind of materials do I like? This way my sewing might become more economical and I might actually end up wearing what I sew.

But then again won’t all this deliberation take all the fun out of sewing? Maybe the hit-and-miss approach is really the right way to go. And do we not sometimes just sew for sewing’s sake? Just to try something new, a new style, a new technique, without having the actual wearing of the garment in mind?

What do you think? Do you often sew things you don’t wear? Have you found any solutions to this problem or are you not bothered by this at all?