Monthly Archives: November 2013

…or a more playful and therefore more apt title would be; Fun with Fashionary!  I’ve been planning for my 11 piece SWAP and doodling and colouring-in like it’s going out of, um, fashion?  🙂
Fashionary have released a new sketch panel, which I am using to map out my autumn/winter sewing for next year.  Autumn/winter seems a looooong way off, but winter stuff is generally more time-consuming, plus I reckon it’s a good idea to put in just a bit of thought.  Summer is easy; handful of little dresses, bob’s your uncle.  A winter wardrobe needs to be mix and match-able since you want to be able to layer everything without your ensemble looking like a dog’s dinner.  Thus, planning…

The new Fashionary sketching panel contains two pads; one is for garments alone, the other has the familiar croquis marked for on-the-body fashion sketching; and I used both!  A new feature is that there are some side view croquis.  Although I actually didn’t make use of it this time, I think having the option of a side view could really come in handy.

The sketch panels are a workaday version of the Fashionary sketchbook; comprising loose sheets of perforated, concertina-ed pages and are an excellent tool for the sort of informal playing-with-ideas kind of brainstorming that comes with putting together a cohesive collection… particularly if you are like me and couldn’t bear the thought of ripping pages from out of your lovely hardbound Fashionary sketchbook.  The panel comes in one of three different designs; women’s, men’s and there is now a children’s version.  I have the women’s version, natch!  Included is a card with examples of flat sketching samples, to help you in drawing realistic and well-detailed garments if, like me, you can’t really draw to save yourself, and a page on which to record an complete set of custom body measurements.  Very helpful!  Each set has 8 panels, with 9 pages per panel, and with the templates printed on both sides, so there’re plenty to play with.  A whole tonne of really inspiring fashion artwork created using the Fashionary notebooks can be viewed on the Fashionary site, here and here
Planning a wardrobe collection way ahead is very sensible! and y’know what? I enjoyed it…   I checked out my fabric stash, then sketched out each of my garment/fabric/pattern ideas,  and dealt them out on the table like playing cards to see how everything worked together and see what stood out like a sore thumb.  I had a couple of early definites that got discarded at this point when I could see quite plain and clearly that they were not going to work with anything else.  Too often, I make something that I think is going to be omg so useful, only to find that; um, it doesn’t actually go with anything else.  Mixing and matching sketches of my little collection was an educational rehearsal.  I grouped and regrouped and pulled out the ideas that didn’t fit in.  Once it was whittled down I stuck them onto the wall behind my sewing machine, to keep me motivated and on the right track to get them all done.  Well that’s the plan!

So, the Chosen Ones are…

Two of the things in my plan are a patchworked tweed wool skirt and a mustard cropped jacket, represented as such in the top picture but drawn back to front in the above picture because I’m dithering on those and may swap those two around.  Undecided on that one…  but optimistic about everything else.  The olive ensemble at lower left is a proposed Alabama Chanin project.  Also, there are two plain lightweight white shirts in the eleven things.  That might sound generic and boring, but I reach for a plain little white top a heckuva lot and so I need lots of them!

As per the swap rules I’m aiming for the eleven garments to be sewn between Christmas and the end of April.  This may or may not actually happen  🙂  It’s an experiment.  I may be all like, ooh this is easy!; breezing through the list happily and without disaster… or I may be like, what the heck was I thinking, everything’s totally hideous!! *bale*   I don’t do that much, but I don’t wanna jinx myself here.  Disasters do happen.  Eleven sounds ambitious, but then it is probably no more than I would make in that time anyway.  It’s doable.  
Between now and then I will make a few more summery dresses and things for myself to supplement my summer wardrobe, plus there’s Christmas sewing to think about!