I just want new clothes – The Self-Made Wardrobe Week 15
The Self-Made Wardrobe is a project where I only wear garments I’ve made.
It’s sort of a year long experiment in getting dressed without clothing labels.
DAY 99 – NOVEMBER 7th
Moonstruck Cardigan
Graphic Silk Circle Skirt
Black Tights
Black Flats
Princess Necklace
Various Rings
I can never quite figure out how I feel about tights with ballet flats. Some days I think they look fine and keep your legs warm. Some days I think that the combination – especially when the tights and the shoes are the same color – make my feet look oddly long… And yet, in this picture I think my feet look kind of short… I guess feet are just a little weird.
DAY 100 – NOVEMBER 8th
Deconstructed Black Sweater
Boring Black Sweater
Basic Black Tank Top
Black Maxi Skirt with a Slit
Black Tights
Sneakers
Princess Necklace
Various Rings
It’s Day 100!!! Yay! Just 265 days to go…
I spent the day at a spindling demonstration/talk at Gauge & Tension (a popup yarn shop in Greenpoint) and would have much preferred to be wearing an easy button up over my boring black sweater – instead of the deconstructed black sweater – because it would have given me more range of arm motion.
Luckily a couple friends and I are planning on doing an Archer* Sew-A-Long starting in December. I have fabric for 2, so I’m going to jump the gun a bit, and sew one shirt before the sew-a-long starts, because I want to be wearing it now…
*Archer is the name of a basic button up shirt pattern, put out by Grainline Studios.
DAY 101 – NOVEMBER 9th
Perfect Transitional Weather Cardigan
Basic Black Tank Top
Pirate Skirt
Various Rings
It turns out that the Perfect Transitional Weather Cardigan, is also the Perfect Sit-At-Home-On-Your-Couch-Knitting-Your-Winter-Coat Cardigan.
DAY 102 – NOVEMBER 10th
Moonstruck Cardigan
Khaki Scarf
Gingham Skirt
Black Flats
Various Rings
I don’t love how this outfit looks, but it was a day of sitting at the computer writing, and these clothes were cozy & comfortable, so I went with it.
DAY 103 – NOVEMBER 11th
Moonstruck Cardigan
Boring Black Sweater
Graphic Silk Circle Skirt
Black Tights
Black Heels
I really love this sweater and skirt combination, but it was so warm I ended up taking off the Moonstruck Cardigan, and just wearing my Boring Black Sweater, which was much more boring to knit than it is to wear.
DAY 104 – NOVEMBER 12th
Boring Black Sweater
Basic Black Tank Top
Black Maxi Skirt with a Slit
Black Flats
Long Necklace with Spinning Pendant
Bead Crochet Bracelet
Various Rings
It was 60 degrees (fahrenheit) in the middle of November. WTH?! So I went back to my default blacks, and I realized a desperately want another black maxi skirt – they’re just so easy to wear!
DAY 105 – NOVEMBER 13th
Boring Black Sweater
Blue Kimono
Winter Coat
Graphic Silk Circle Skirt
Grey Tights
Black Heels
I took my winter coat out for an experiment yesterday. It was chilly enough to need it, but not cold enough to be a terrible mistake.
I’m super glad to say it worked! I only wore a light sweater under it, plus my blue kimono, and I was quite warm, but I definitely want to add a front zipper, and pockets. I wore the blue kimono over the sweater and under the coat to help keep the alpaca fuzz off all my other clothes – which also worked.
single minded knitting focus ends up paying off
Each Wednesday, I post little snippets about what’s happening, and what I’m working on.
Stick a fork in it, the knitting of my winter coat is done! I finished Monday night,
and then I promptly started another sweater.
I fall in and out of love affairs with spinning. Sometimes all I want to do is spin, and sometimes I have absolutely no interest in sitting at the wheel, or picking up the spindle.
Last weekend Gauge & Tension (a popup yarn shop out in Brooklyn) had a spindling demo by fiber artist Robyn Love, that totally rekindled my love of spinning. So I used it to bribe myself into finishing the knitting on the coat.
And I also used spinning to “encourage” myself to finish up a couple half finished blog posts (including the one about my pirate skirt.)
arrrggghhh! – the I’m a pirate skirt
I absolutely adore this skirt!
The fabric is some sort of striped rayon (I think) that I inherited from my aunt, and the “pattern” is a pleated rectangle with an elastic waistband at the top.
I started making something else out of this fabric, and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, but it obviously didn’t work out. I took that project apart, and pieced the pieces back into a rectangle of sorts. Then I pleated the top edge into wide overlapping pleats, that I then stitched into place.
I originally installed a zipper and had a proper waistband, but that made for a skirt that slipped & slid all over the place. So I removed the waistband & zipper, closed up the size seam, and added a thin elastic waistband above the pleating.
The elastic and the pleating kind of fight each other when it’s hanging on the hanger – the elastic pulls in, but the pleating doesn’t, so the elastic waistband ends up looking a little funky. But it’s perfect when I wear it, which is (really) the important part.
(you bet I make these photoshoots do double duty.)
My favorite part of this skirt, is the hemline.
Two of the pieces I ended up with after the unsuccessful first project were skinny and slightly angled. So I pieced those one above the other, and put that piece at the front of the skirt.
Instead of intentionally matching that accidental angle, on the other half of the skirt, to give the skirt a high-low hem,* I left the panel my right (the left side of the picture) as it was, and let the hem take a vertical nosedive to the floor.
*a high-low hem is a hem that is high in the front, and then dips lower in the back, they were huge on skirts and dresses a couple summers ago.
I love the asymmetricality of that bit of the hem, and the edge it gives the skirt.
The downside of this, is that the skirt is very long, which means I can only wear it with certain shoes, these nude booties being one of them.
As piecemeal as the construction of this skirt was, I’m pretty damn chuffed with how it came out.
PS. I’ve didn’t realize exactly how much TopGearUK I’ve been marathoning until I actually used “chuffed” in a sentence – I blame knitting my winter coat.
