Pattern Choices for My Fall Autumn Spice Wardrobe

I now have finished the Seamwork Design Your Wardrobe course, selected all of my patterns, purchased enough fabric to get started on projects, and have begun sewing my first outfit. In my last post, I promised to share my pattern choices, so that is today's topic. 

Selecting patterns was so much fun, but it can become a little challenging to narrow them down to a manageable project queue if you have an extensive wish list. Now that there are so many amazing independent designers out there, I am saving new patterns on Instagram and Pinterest pretty much on a daily basis. At this point, I not only have my fall patterns chosen but also most of my winter wants. I love this process, though, because my winter wardrobe will compliment my fall wardrobe, and I am moving closer to having a cohesive closet that aligns with my core style. 

So here is the plan for Fall 2024:

1. Skirt: McCall's 8061 View C
2. Top: Seamwork Orlando Tee
3. Jacket: Fibre Mood Penny Jacket
4. Top: Seamwork Samson Top
5. Pants: Seamwork Joss Pants
6. Jacket: All Well Cardigan Coat
7. Dress: Seamwork Knox Pinafore
8. Dress: Seamwork Sonya Dress

I selected these patterns with a certain amount of versatility in mind. I will be able to mix and match some of the pieces, and I have a number of existing pieces of clothing in my wardrobe that can be worn with these new additions. Focusing on a color palette also will provide me with a great travel wardrobe. One of my ultimate goals is to not pack four pairs of shoes when I go on a trip. God help me there. 

My Fall Wardrobe Color Palette

I have started sewing the McCall's skirt, and I am not sure what will happen with the matching Orlando tee. I am learning to use a projector for pattern cutting and made a dumb mistake with the Orlando tee. I accidentally cut out two fronts to the tee because I had my fabric doubled as I normally do with paper patterns. I was so focused on my projector set up that I wasn't thinking about my fabric. Ugh. Unless I find more of the same fabric (which was on clearance), I will have to scrap the Orlando tee or turn it into a matching tank top. Oh, well. 

My plan for the next week is to finish the skirt and start on the Penny Jacket. 

I would love to know what your own fall sewing goals are. Feel free to share in the comments. 

Gathering Inspiration for My Versatile, Expressive, Modern Fall Wardrobe

Week Two of the Design Your Wardrobe course at Seamwork focuses on setting a goal and gathering inspiration. This part was easy for me. Once I realized what my wardrobe woes were in Week One, I knew what my goal needed to be for this project. My goal is to create a fall collection of pieces that are both practical and stylish and that work together and offer options. Essentially, my goal is to create a fall capsule collection in a mix of patterns and textures. Because I want a well thought-out, coordinated fall wardrobe that is truly a collection. 

I have been gathering inspiration over the past couple of weeks in a number of ways: pinning patterns and looks on Pinterest boards, bookmarking posts from other makers on Instagram, revisiting my own pattern collection, searching the pattern library on Seamwork, and doing a bit of fabric shopping. I knew very early on what my color palette would be. I purchased two coordinating viscose crepe fabrics for my current pre-fall top and pants project, and I love the colors: cinnamon, teak, black, white, tan/sand. My color palette now has evolved into rust, black, white, and tan due to color range availability while fabric shopping. 

Choosing a color palette and fabric is the focus for this next week, but once I decided on patterns and a color palette, I couldn't wait to head over to my local JoAnn Fabrics to see what I could find. And I got really lucky on that first trip. I found a color splash denim at 30% off, tan quilted cotton for 30% off, a rust floral knit on clearance at $4.97 a yard, a patterned/textured organic cotton on clearance for $3.97 a yard, and a black and white windowpane brushed cotton at 70% off. I love the mix of patterns and textures of these fabrics. 

My first outing for fall wardrobe fabric was a great success!

I'm still looking for a rust twill for pants and twill or denim or corduroy for a couple of color-blocked dresses I want to make. This isn't Project Runway, though; I have plenty of time to fabric shop and work out the rest of the details. I have been a bit ambitious in the number of pieces in this collection, but my patterns aren't overly complicated. And I already am thinking that the color splash denim jacket may get pushed into my winter collection. 

My Fall Wardrobe Patterns

I will go into more detail about my pattern choices in a later post, but here is where my thinking is today. My fall capsule wardrobe will include two dresses, two tops, one skirt, one pair of pants, and two jackets. I  foresee a lot of versatility with and interchangeability between these pieces. 

I am really having fun planning this collection. I love having a road map for my makes over the next two or three months rather than randomly buying fabric and a pattern. This just makes so much sense!

My Core Style Words for Fall 2024 (And What I've Learned About Myself This Week)

I just joined Seamwork and signed up for the Design Your Wardrobe course in order to bring some cohesiveness to my closet and to help me build a solid capsule wardroble for fall. We just completed Week 1 of the course, and in this first week, one of the biggest objectives was for us to figure out our personal style by working through exercises in the Style Workshop workbook. Through this thorough exploration, we were tasked to ultimately define our core style in three words. 

Working through my Style Workshop exercises

Before I reveal my core style words, I'd like to share some observations I made about my style and my wardrobe this week. We were asked to dig deep within our histories, values, cultural influences, and body types/self-images in order to determine why we dress the way we dress and how that does and doesn't reflect who we really are. 

One main observation I made is that my personal taste never crystallized. I never really knew my own taste and style. My wardrobe through the years revolved around fast fashion trends. I wore a lot of cute inexpensive pieces of clothing that were rarely purchased as a complete outfit. For a long while (about ten years ago now), my favorite stores were Marshalls and TJ Maxx, and I would pop into one or the other as often as I could and buy whatever cute top or sweater or skirt I stumbled across. I admit that I purchased clothing that I never wore because I didn't have a plan for them. 

After my Marshalls-TJ Maxx phase, I got into thrifting. But I ended up with the same disjointed wardrobe. And my thrifted wardrobe, for the most part, didn't look fresh. 

This past week I spent time inside my closet. I wanted to figure out why it takes me so long to find something to wear each day when I have a closet (and drawers) full of clothes. I realized that, essentially, as I retired from a long career in academia, my closet didn't. Most items hanging in my closet are very dressy dresses and skirts and pants and jackets that no longer serve my lifestyle as a home-based sewist, milliner, blogger. In a typical week, I leave my home to run errands, maybe take the train to the city to see a play or visit a museum, or dine out with friends. I don't wear a dressy dress and heels for any of those things. 

But here's the thing: I don't want to live my life in shorts and t-shirts either. I still like to feel put together to an extent even on days when I never leave home. How I dress truly feeds my mood. I want to wear stylish clothing and fix my hair and put on a bit of makeup and spritz on a little perfume. That is what makes me feel good on a day-to-day basis.

After all of the deep thinking about the good, the bad, and the ugly of my relationship with clothes, I was asked to make a long list of words from my answers to the exercises in the workbook. From that long list of words, I was asked to choose ten words that were most important to me. And then I needed to narrow my list even further to find the three words that were most aligned to who I am today. 

And so, at the end of the week, at the end of the day...

My Core Style Words are

• versatile
• expressive
• modern

As I move forward in designing and sewing my fall wardrobe, I do so with these thoughts in mind:

A versatile wardrobe (one that is practical and provides my capsule wardrobe pieces) allows me to utilize a piece in more than one way within and across outfits and allows me to dress the piece up or down. 

An expressive wardrobe (creative, artsy, bold, colorful) allows me to choose colors and patterns that reflect my personality.

A modern wardrobe (edgy, sleek, fresh) allows me to incorporate pieces with different features/lines than what I already have.

Whew! That was a lot of work, and I had no idea that this is the style that I am looking for at this point in my life. For the first time I feel as if my style is crystallizing. In all of my excitement I jumped ahead a bit and started picking out patterns and buying fabric for this project, but I still have a bit more thought to put into the next steps. At the end of next week, I will share my inspiration as well as my pattern and fabric choices. 

Right now, I have more homework to do. 

My Big 2024 Sewing Goal and How I Got Here (The Short Story)

The very first thing I want to do in 2024 is clean out my closet. I am planning a major purge to clear out all the ready-to-wear pieces that I don't wear in order to make room for my big goal: to build a wardrobe consisting almost entirely of clothing that I have sewn. Over the next year, I am going to try not to buy any new ready-to-wear clothing, none at all, and instead make every new piece I wear. 

Right now, I am getting reacquainted with sewing apparel. Like many women of my generation, I learned to sew as a young girl. I couldn't tell you what I sewed in those days, but I clearly remember learning to sew on my mother's Sears Kenmore machine at a very young age. When I got to high school, I took sewing as an elective for two semesters and began to make a lot of my own clothes. I do remember a number of those pieces...a blue velvet blazer, a blue plaid blouse with a metallic thread running through it, a pair of turquoise pants with a matching striped tee. But that was about 43 years ago, and after high school I did very little sewing. 

In 2019 I bought a Singer Patchwork on Black Friday and started sewing again, but I hadn't figured out pattern sizing yet, and almost everything I made was too small for me. I got frustrated and gave up on apparel. I turned to crocheting instead, which was another skill I learned as a young girl and had abandoned somewhere along the way. After making a number of afghans, I then turned to hatmaking during the pandemic and have been making flat-pattern hats for the past three years. I loved making hats so much that I bought more sewing machines and turned my spare bedroom into a full-fledged studio, a space that I absolutely love. 

I very recently decided to give apparel sewing another try. I decided to start simple and take my time relearning technique. It's been fun pulling out patterns and fabric that I bought back in 2019 and boxed away out of frustration. On Black Friday this year, I bought a serger (and I will soon tell more stories about this!). I am really enjoying sewing clothing again, and although I still have not entirely figured out my pattern size, I am getting closer. The new items that I made are just slightly roomy rather than way too small. 

So back to my goals for 2024...

I want to start the year off making blouses with details, such as statement sleeves and pussybows. I also want to make some knit midi dresses. By the end of 2024, I want to be able to make some tailored pieces, like a structured navy blue blazer (as in the classic Parisian style, brass buttons and all). This navy blue blazer is my dream piece for 2024. 

Mainly, I want to take my time, perfect my skills, and add pieces to my wardrobe that I will be proud to wear for many years.