Wardrobe Wednesday: A 6PAC plan

Wardrobe Wednesday might be the place for this and it might not but let’s look together, shall we?

The Spring/Summer Queue originally, with edits in the indents:

Brown bike-able skirt… maybe knit, maybe a bubble.

Instead, I’m gonna do a grey/blue pleated skirt with pockets and a wide waistband. I’ll pull out that brown knit for a bubble this summer.

Scraps of the purple-white floral dress to a bike-able skirt

This might happen, but it isn't something I need for work.

Breezy white woven top

Another breezy top

Already in progress, and it’s grey and white paisley print and uses piping.  Look for a post upon completion. 

Rie Dress In the NON-MATERNITY version

If I can find some good lace, I may still make this one… but I have to see if the pattern would work with a woven.  I have a dotted Swiss in mind for this one, so I might get pretty picky here. 

Shirtdress- blue Oxford cloth

Might be a Summer dress… especially if I can work out the fit on M5801.  I think if I just assembly line the construction for this and for the Easter dress of yore I would have 2 awesome summer dresses that’ll go into the fall like a dream. 

Not on the list:

Alter vintage white eyelet dress- It was my mom's and she's passed it on, and I hope to wear it for Easter!

Finish brown-and-white pinstripe dress- will go into Summer really well, especially when more brown starts to play in the rest of my wardrobe.

A white knit tee

Wardrobe Wednesday: 6PAC, Attempt 2

Yes, I’m trying again… What can I say? I like the camaraderie and friendly spirit of the 6PAC groups at Stitchers Guild, and how the rules are a little more lax and there’s no sense of competition in the thing.  We all come out winners because we get to see, and ideally make, lovely garments. 

I think that these 6-PACs and these more manageable chunks have value, and I think naming and thinking of what works from season to season is important. As we work our way into Spring, I am thinking of and building on these wardrobe concepts with the lovely ladies in the Spring 6PAC group, even though I doubt I will ever fully commit to this way of wardrobe planning. I like my clothes too much to go down to as few of or as neutral of pieces as is recommended in this school of thought.

But… who doesn’t want for the things in their closet to play more nicely together?

And why not sew things for Spring that will be workhorses through the summer?

This is a Wardrobe Wednesday post because these 6-PACS are intended to make your whole closet play well together, and that’s something we all want to shoot for, and the thing that started out this whole series of Wardrobe Wednesday posts… This post speaks to that desire, and I think to why I started out on this whole journey to begin with. 

So, what’s the plan, you ask…

I could look at the queue… and I will.  But I think that list will be changing shortly to narrow colors and styles and look at what I’ve got...  You can see my colors over there.  I’ll let you know about more changes, and tell you more soon!

the cutting bug

So, I am following in Becky’s footsteps.  You see, she's been a cutting fiend of late, to be able to quickly have things to sew once gardening season and recital time approach.

  I am not on the time crunches that she is in the same ways, necessarily.  I am space-constrained, and experimenting by cutting a few things at once while I can get to my fabrics and my patterns, and then I switch space around to be able to get to notions and set up the iron and my machine. 

Last Saturday started the cutting bug… I still blame Whipstitch.  And owe that place sooooo much gratitude with my blame.  2 hours of quilt cutting.
 And then a quick top…

And then a couple hours later a skirt…

And then earlier this week some bias tape…

And the next night, 2 bags…
Aren't they all pretty sitting there lined up?  Just some rectangles, facings, and linings and I'll have myself a weekend.

Cutting has happened lots, y’all.  Here’s to hoping some good sewing follows. 

Ah, but first…

Midterms.  Which I’m doing now.  

Ira Glass says it best.

Something we all should know:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” 
― Ira Glass 


Here's to fighting through it.  
One garment, one necklace, one recipe... one whatever at a time.  

Update!

Productive creature that I am, I updated the queue with projects for the coming season and links back to completed things.  Babysitting nights are good for planning these things, and Google Tasks holds a running little idea list from which I am able to choose things for the queue, and remember things from the queue on a regular basis.  

Some of them will link to projects which only need pictures that have been completed in the near past, and will be posted in the near future, and others will be awaiting stitching after my workspace date over at Whipstitch.  Some are reminders from this time last year, and I'm okay with that too... Especially since many of those are refashions of precious things I can't seem to bring myself to part with.  

As Gwen says all the time... 

I'll get to it, it's in the Queue...

Hanger trick

It might be time to revisit the lovely Wardrobe Wednesdays series, friends…

I am planning for Spring, and have done a much better job these days of wearing more of what I have due to a tip found on Pinterest… One I have mentioned before, which has countless names and just happens to be awesome and work:  The hanger trick.  

It's been called many things, and given many time parameters, but it's a fun little challenge and you can see what you wear and what you don't simply by looking at which way more hangers are facing.  
I'm about a month into it because I didn't flip things around in my closet until I had settled in from being home from Europe, but I have already notices that I wear more things, and that before the deadline I have set(1 year, not 6 months, because I don't flip my closet seasonally), I am more ready to give up some things I know I won't wear, because I can see a difference between the things left to be turned around and the things that have already been turned around.  It's a lovely trick to keep only the things you love and wear and fit the body you have now.  
Awesome, right?

A Whipstitch Sort of Morning

Y’all, have you been in here? Have you seen this awesome playground for us fabric fiends? Oh, it’s fabulous, friends…  So great.  Whipstitch’s brick-and-mortar store is about 20 minutes from where I live in town, and they do much more than sell you fabric.  The bright, open space is home to a little workshop with space to set up machines at the back and 2 lovely big cutting tables.  With rotary mats.  And get this… when they aren’t in use for the classes, they are open to be used by the general community. 
Great lighting, an awesome atmosphere that buzzes with friendliness and creativity, and a great staff full of ladies who love to talk shop, and just... Talk.  I walk in there and it’s like a magic idea switch just… flips.  I decide to make a quilt, or I start picturing how great that would look as a dress… 

A while back, I had an evening with friends in which I begun to cut that quilt out, and besides giving myself a new scar (rotary cutter user operator error… I learned my lesson!) I can’t say I accomplished much...  I cut maybe 3 pieces of fabrics into strips that will eventually become squares.  See?
 Maybe I wrote about it.  I was pretty proud of those strips and how much I managed to get done.

But yesterday, with a big cutting table at my disposal and a few hours to knock it out I went from folds of fabric to strips. And then from strips to squares.  So.  Great.  It goes so much faster when you’re not stopping to move everything when you cut every strip.  In 2 hours and change, I got SO.  MUCH.  DONE.  I cut all of the remaining fabric into pretty little strips, which make me want to set up my rotary stuff on my coffee table so that everything can be pretty little squares so we can play 9-patch... It's gonna happen.