Trending: Straight Skirts

There is a lot of chatter this year in the sewing community with regard to creating wearable wardrobe pieces and crafting a closet full of custom clothing. The ladies at the Coletterie have been running a wardrobe architect series to help focus on the concepts of building a solid wardrobe with a lot of good advice and direction if you're interested and looking for a good starting point. This is a subject I've spent a lot of time thinking about. It's the reason I started sewing in the first place. At the beginning of last year, I tried to make a list of the pieces I thought would constitute my ideal wardrobe. I really tried to  take my day to day dress into consideration when I wrote the list. Five days a week, I'm in an office. When I'm at home, I like to be comfortable. When I venture out, I like to have outing specific attire.  I prefer tailored clothes that fit well. I don't wear a lot of oversized or excessively drapey garments, and I'm not comfortable in tight, clingy clothes. I like clothing that helps to accentuate my waistline and take focus away from my hips. I like natural fabrics. I prefer lined garments. I like garments that look well made and high-end. 

I made progress sewing garments that I wanted to wear during 2013. But, I still didn't feel I had found my style identity through sewing.  Also, importantly, I didn't produce nearly enough garments to cover my daily, weekly, monthly or seasonal clothing needs. 

The projects from my 2013 sewing I am most pleased with are the skirts I made. I like the way I look in skirts. Also, I feel really comfortable in them.  In January, Gail conducted a little sewing experiment that completely resonated with me. She tweaked a skirt pattern to fit her body exactly the way she wanted, and she made three versions of that skirt. boom. boom. boom.  A lot of sewers would refer to a pattern of this type as a TNT (tried and true) pattern. A pattern that fits. A pattern that you turn to repeatedly, because you know exactly what to expect from it. A pattern that produces a garment you love to wear. 

I don't have any. I've only sewn the same pattern on one previous occasion to make skirts last year.  I'm not sure what benefit I associated with using a different pattern for each project, but for some reason, that's exactly what I've done.  

Comically, when I look through inspiration pictures I've collected, like the ones above, I find that I'm not drawn to a huge variety of different styles. My taste is very vanilla. All of the skirts I've pinned over the last two years fall into one of three categories: Straight, Skater, Maxi. The variety I'm seeking isn't in pattern variation, it's in fabric choice.  

I am able to make the same sorts of groupings with pants,  blouses, and jackets.  The good news is, I know what I like. The bad new is, I haven't been sewing those things. I think it's time to try something new and do a little bit of production/assembly line sewing.  Instead of looking at my wardrobe as a whole, I've got my sights set on spring. I've started by making a handful of straight skirts. If I can keep up the momentum, I would like to approach the other garments on my wishlist in the same way.

There's going to be a lot of the same around here while I work on this project. I'll do what I can to keep it interesting.  I'm starting with Simplicity 9267, the same pattern I used to make the wool chevron skirt I sewed in March. I dove into my fabric stash and easily found half a dozen pieces of fabric to get me started.