Quilting

Several years ago, I had the unfortunate pleasure of a very long recovery from an illness. Weak and ill-tempered, there wasn't much I was able to do for many weeks and McKenna Ryan came to the rescue.

I had purchased several of her small quilts as kits from a clearance sale at my local quilting store and had put them away as aspirational projects.
I got them out during this recovery period and proceeded to cut out and iron-on the hundreds of individual pieces in about thirty different shades of green, rust and grey. When I got to the quilting stage, I couldn't yet sit that long at the sewing machine, so I put them away and life took over. I recently found them again and with a few pointers from my sister, the master quilter, here is my first attempt at free motion quilting. It's good enough as a start or experiment, but it really isn't my favorite sewing pastime.  This is the first of five; there are four more to finish.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Wardrobe Planning - Orphan Garments

How many times have you opened your closet door and sighed, "I haven't got a thing to wear," yet the rack is over stuffed with hangers and the floor is littered with shoes. Too often we have plenty of clothes, but nothing suitable for the intended occasion. It may be an old joke having to many clothes and nothing to wear, but it is hardly funny.

We all ignore common sense when planning wardrobes and we can't resist the newest fashion trends. We spend very little time on learning what is really becoming to us. If we do learn this at one time or another, we often fail to update our look as we age. I cannot wear the colors and styles of my youth, or of my early working career. My shape and coloring have changed as I have aged and my wardrobe has too.

Plan carefully include all the day to day business, home life and social activities you participate in in your planning. With thought, you can actually reduce your wardrobe size while extending its' versatility.

Extending your wardrobe does not mean creating an all inclusive mix and match closet nor does it mean having a drawer full of accessories for your little black dress.

Careful planning means choosing items that can have a wider variety of use and changing and replacing only a few items each year to update your look. Finally, let us be rid of the notion that we can never wear the exact same outfit twice in the same season or month. For heaven's sake, ladies, if you look absolutely great in an outfit wear it twice a week!

Everyone has a skirt, jacket or other item that they wear only occasionally and those items tend to go out of style before you get good service from them. They become orphan garments in your wardrobe and ultimately money wasted from your budget. Find these items. Try them on. Do they fit? Are they fashionable? Do you love them? If you can respond honestly "yes" to all three of these questions. Then consider readopting these orphans back into your wardrobe by adding just a few key items. Take a serious inventory and see what your really need.

Here are some examples.

A basic dress and jacket combination can be mixed and matched by adding a tailored skirt to blend with the jacket. Add a print blouse that blends with the jacket and tailored skirt. Finally, consider a pretty gathered skirt in the same print. The printed blouse and skirt can be worn together as a dress and the jacket will now go with the original dress, the new tailored skirt, and the printed skirt and blouse.

A soft tailored suit will get extra mileage with a new solid tailored sleeveless top and again add a skirt and blouse in a muted print. Make the blouse short sleeved for warm weather and perhaps choose an solid color cardigan as another option to the suit jacket.

A casual jacket and pleated skirt can get more wear with pants or shorts added to the mix. Try adding a slim skirt in a contrasting color with a matching blouse for more options.

Beyond the LBD....we all have one and often it's just what is needed for a formal event, but there are times and places where your LBD is not welcome. What then? The cocktail suit is a smart option. This is a dressy, less tailored suit in a beautiful, formal, but classic fabric, something like solid silk shangtung. Add a contrasting colored sleeveless shift blouse to wear with the suit skirt and then add a full length skirt in a darker pastel to give extra wear to either the blouse or jacket. A chiffon shirt blouse further extends your options as does a chiffon skirt in  a pretty, but subtle, print.

A Small Rework

I've reworked my red polka dot dress a little.




On the left is the old dress, on the right the new look. I replaced the buttons and took in the bodice darts. I've got a bit better fit and the red buttons blend into the dress unobtrusively. It's better, but the red color is more suited to summer in Belgium rather than February. The dress is going into the summer wardrobe.

My previous closet cleaning post has revealed some interesting results. I have lived out of my "spark joy" clothes for two weeks. I have retrieved only two items from my seven bags of discards. One was a brand new black cotton cardigan and the other and black and white checked scarf. The rest I don't miss in the least.

I did learn that I prefer skirts and blouses to dresses in my winter wardrobe and that can be seen by my past sewing projects on the blog.  I think that trend should continue. There is one thing I am missing, white shirt. I tossed all of my old ones because their time had come. It's time for a new crisp white shirt.

Not a darn thing....

I recently took part in a clutter challenge. My clothing wardrobe consists of 3 parts, summer, winter, and the core. The core clothes are things that remain year round, jeans, cotton cardigans, sneakers, ect. Winter and summer are just that, clothes that must be stored off season. I have maintained my wardrobe for years using the general rules I have laid out in seven steps in this post. I think this system has served me well for many years and I didn't see any need to change. Using this system, I had reasonable sized wardrobe and plenty to wear. I always had space for my clothes and didn't consider my wardrobe overly large or full of unwearable pieces.

I didn't believe the hype of Marie Kondo and I was challenged to it. I dumped my entire wardrobe into the guest room. Everything from everywhere went on the bed, and then the floor and the shoes spilled out into the hallway. It took half a day just to locate and collect my clothing. I will never show anyone the before pile. It was truly amazing, humbling, and shameful.

This is the first after photo, my summer wardrobe is six hanging garments, one Rubbermaid tote, 5 shoe boxes and one sweater box. A pair of Wellies and a pair of garden clogs are in the garage. (The other sweater box has a few heirlooms in it.) I am truly amazed. I am not 100% convinced yet, and the discards have not left the house....but this was starting to become a very interesting experiment.

So this is the closet with the summer and core wardrobe. There is still plenty of space and nothing is crowded, but I had the winter garments to sort and add. That was not fun. Winter clothes take up a lot of space and I am unwilling to part with some clothing that I consider essential winter survival gear. I still have an arctic winter parka, my LL.Bean Hunter's boots and wool socks. I need them now and again living here, but not every winter and they certainly don't spark any Konmari joy. If I had to be critical of the Marie Kondo's method of clutter removal, there is a category of things that are absolutely essential, but completely joyless, to own. Snow survival gear falls into just that division, so does pantyhose, granny pants, and a spare pair of shoe laces.

The above three photos are the finished project. The closet contains the core wardrobe plus the winter wardrobe. The summer hanging items have been moved to a seasonal family closet which also contains other necessary but infrequently worn items such has our ski wear and heavy winter parkas. This closet will also hold our winter coats during the off season as they are hung in the front hall closet along with our boots and hiking gear. The cedar chest has my wool sweaters, half is empty for my husband's things. The chest of drawers contains underclothes and pajamas. They are in exactly two and a half drawers as this chest is also shared. 

As a result of this challenge, other things happened. .I exchanged two rooms in my home. That is, the sewing room became our bedroom, and the master bedroom of the house is now my sewing room. This is because the closets in our new room function better than the old ones. The room is only two-thirds the size of the original master but everything fits and there is nothing superfluous to the purpose of this room. My husband also cleaned out his clothing.

 I still have reservations about the amount of things I discarded. It was more than seven bags of clothing between the two of us and it represented about 60% of my wardrobe. I have tied those bags up tightly and put them in the guest room like some secret start of a hoard. The change of seasons for clothing is only about 60 days away. If I don't need things to be added back into to the closet, the bags will be discarded at Easter time.

There are two final results of this experiment. The first is that the contents of the sewing room is now heaped on the floor of its new home beckoning me to continue the procedure.  The second result is that purpose of this blog is called into question. I invite comments from my readers as I'm not sure where my sewing hobby is going to be heading in the future as apparently I need not a darn thing.