Lazy wardrobe evaluation

For various reasons, work among them, I haven't been getting all that much sewing done. But the weather has recently changed, leading me to think about wardrobe planning. Now, there's no shortage of resources about this. Many of them take the "haul everything out and have a big think" approach. Nothing wrong with that, I do it sometimes, and probably anyone who's set out to find articles or books on the topic is contemplating doing something drastic anyway. But of course, it can't be done every day.

Day-to-day, the way I usually organize my closets is a rotational system. I doubt I'm the first one to think of it: Whenever something has been worn/comes out of the wash, I put it back at one end of the closet. I try to make my next choice of what to wear from the opposite end, or close to it. If anything really backs up there, that means it's being passed over repeatedly, and maybe I need to do something about that.

Other places, you'll commonly see questions about whether the item fits, needs some sort of repair/is beyond repair, is too outdated, etc. I'll skip over those and go to a few other, perhaps subtler problems I've seen with my own stuff.

• It's the wrong level of formality for what I usually wear. In that case, I might move it to either my "formalwear" or "lounge/workout wear" section, if it fits in there and I intend to keep it. (I use the same rotational system for those sub-areas, but I'm a little less ruthless with the formalwear because I'm not a socialite… though in view of that, I probably do need to stop sewing so much formalwear and costumes. Moving right along….)
• I don't mix patterns fearlessly, so printed and even some tone-on-tone separates can be hard to pair up. That usually means I need a higher ratio of solids to prints for that season.
• Some tops need a skin-tone bra, which I think are kinda ugly/boring, so I often don't have a lot of them. When that issue comes up, it means I need to bite the bullet and either buy more of those bras, or get rid of some of those tops.
• Short tops and low-waisted bottoms don't play nicely. This can mean getting stricter about the lengths/waist positions of things I buy/make/keep, or making sure I have quite a few longer tops and/or higher-waisted bottoms. (I think really high-waisted pants are problematic—harder to fit, and since I've got a long rise, they can be unflattering unless they're quite loose—so I tend to prefer skirts for the latter case.)
• The color doesn't match the palette I'm trying to work toward, and therefore most of my other clothes and accessories. There isn't a lot I can do about this, since I'm not willing to dye things, so I'm gradually phasing those things out. It does mean I rarely buy fabric online anymore, unless it's a site that gives out Pantone numbers, thread color numbers, or swatches. (I could write a lot more on that whole topic, but at the moment I'm working toward something of a Soft Summer/Carol Tuttle Type 2 palette.)

All of this lets me collect data over time, which puts me in a better position when I'm ready to do the "big think". I tend to make final decisions on what to get rid of a few times a year, when I switch things around to put the seasonally-appropriate ones in the most convenient closet. I'm trying to get a bit more systematic about that too; more on that later.

Knit fitting, etc.

I've meant to write about choosing knit sizing, but check out Lena Merrin's post -- this method is pretty much exactly the same as what I do. Knits are so varied in stretch and recovery that I feel this is the best way to judge what the finished measurement of the piece should be. I use it for anything that touches the hipline, not just skirts. Where it may get more complicated is applying this to other parts of the body that may need their own alterations (bust vs. upper back, for example)... but I think the hip is generally a reasonable place to start.

Stuff update: my sewing supplies were last seen in Brampton, after cooling their heels in Montreal. It'll be several days yet.

No more sewing, for now.

All of my sewing supplies and machines are now in a shipping container, and there they will remain for about a month, if the container tracking estimates hold. For various reasons, I decided to let the turquoise coat (and its shoulder pads that I'd been planning to work on) get packed too. That means this won't be much of a sewing blog for the time being. In the next few days, it could be a knitting blog, but only about the one pullover I've been working on... not too exciting. So there will be either a fairly light or fairly off-topic schedule, or both, until further notice. That, or I'll take up hand sewing.

May plans

Happy May Day.

I cleaned and oiled my machines today, but otherwise they had the day off. The sewing machine really could stand to be serviced, BTW; I'm waiting to get back to a 120V area for that.

If all goes as planned, I'm expecting to have less than three weeks before everything goes into a shipping container. I can't decide whether I should sit on my hands or sew like mad. Mostly I'm doing the former right now, but I really would like to get at least the turquoise boiled wool coat done and in one piece. After that, I'm thinking maybe linen trousers, but that might be a terrible idea.

Either way, toward the end of the month I will become limited to knitting and/or hand-sewing, depending on what goes in the Ark of Things Not Packed, and then, for some days (weeks?) I will most likely not be blogging at all. That could easily continue well into June, depending on what sort of connectivity I have (or don't).

Anyway, for now, the fit of the coat looks promising; I think I'll be able to do the princess-seam topstitching and the shoulder seams, and leave any changes to the (non-topstitched) side seams and princess darts.

Off for a few days

There'll probably be no sewing progress, maybe some knitting progress, and no posts for the next few days. I expect to start up again next week.

Next project, and a break

I'm leaning toward cutting the Schnittquelle Pulli Trondheim next. I have a teal-green boiled wool that I think might work, but I have to take another look at it and decide whether the hand is right.

In any case, no sewing is going to happen for the next week or so, so I don't plan on there being any posting either.

What's this blog thing doing here?

This is meant to be yet another sewing blog, mostly. The plan is to document process more than results, so that the intermediate stages can seem (to me, anyway) more like accomplishments in themselves. I've been on PatternReview for some time, and when I do have finished objects that seem relevant, I expect I'll continue to post them there. Long-term works in progress, half-baked ideas, partial book reviews and comparisons, theorizing, and experimental projects are the sorts of things that will go here.