Self Sewn Wardrobe Series - Planning

I signed up to take a 7 week sewing class called the Self Sewn Wardrobe Series. I'm pretty excited about it. In particular I'm excited about the planning session. I am not very intentional about my wardrobe, and have been slowing reading The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees.

The instructor, Niku, had some great worksheets to plan out the shirt, pants and dress we would make in the series. All the patterns are from 100 Acts of Sewing. So I got to ruminating on mood, color/patterns, fabrics for the series.

Mood keywords: flow, comforting to wear, layers/color and fun.

Fabrics was easy. I knew I wanted to make the pants in linen or a linen blend, and possibly use it for the dress too. Otherwise cotton. I spent a delightful time at Valli and Kim fabrics, and found a lovely Essex Yarn Dyed linen/cotton blend for the pants, and a two toned shot cotton for the shirt, and a delicate floral pattern for the dress. I made sure they all coordinated so I could mix and match.

When someone asks me my favorite color, I often say green or purple. I do have a fair bit of green in my wardrobe, but not a lot of purple. I have a lot of grey and black, and also blue in my wardrobe. I think blue often winds up being a go to color, and I like grey or black to blend in.

As I looked at clothes on Pinterest and thought about things, I realized that I really like colors and floral fabrics but I'm often reluctant to wear them. I'm an introvert and I really don't want to draw attention to myself. Compliments are nice, but I'm usually embarrassed by them, and I certainly don't want the attention. I looked in my closet again and realized there are a couple floral blouses I wear, but the patterns are small and they are usually on a dark background.

I was a bit of a clothes horse as a teen and in my 20s. And didn't dress to disappear. I think some changes happened as I gained weight, and more happened as I became unhappy in my marriage. There's definitely some baggage I'm carrying from the ex, and at some point I hope I can just put that bag down. It's heavy.

A week into the class Niku talked about a podcast from Love to Sew. The topic was Sewing Makes You Love Yourself, which is a thing...to share your story of how sewing makes you love yourself. Holy cow. Now I'm ruminating on why I like certain clothes and how they make me feel. There's a lot to explore and I don't think I've even scratched the surface. I'm sure I'll write more as I process this more. There's a journey in here somewhere that will have some illuminating results...and I think get me closer to having a style and not using my clothes to hide.