Doctor T Designs

With the mindset of focusing more on sewing on this blog, I’ve decided to break up my look back at last year’s goals and my look forward to plans for 2019.  My upcoming plans will be posted on the 31st, as is my tradition January 1 (because I need to finish my Sew Your Kibbe Series first!), but I thought I would take a look back at 2018 today.

Bonus Goal: I’ve learned that setting goals of making specific items doesn’t usually work for me, but there are certainly some “staple” items that I’ve never made and would like to try, just to increase my skill set.  The top three of these being a button-down shirt, jeans, or a corset.  I’m also dying to make a few t-shirt quilts. Said shirts are taking up a lot of space in my sewing room, and I’ve never made a quilt before.  If I make any of these items in 2018, I’ll consider it an accomplishment.

WIN!  I made Ginger Jeans as part of my Spring Sew Geeky Capsule.  The fit is far from perfect, and I don’t wear them as much as my RTW jeans because of the fit issues, but, still.  I made jeans!

(5) Sew more exercise clothes. 

FAIL.  I don’t think I made any clothes for myself that were intended to be worn for exercise purposes.

(4) Cosplay for Wondercon/Costume-Con.  

QUASI-WIN.  I did make my stealth cosplay for The Magicians, so I think that counts, but not in time for any conventions this year.  I still need to add all the accessories, but the major parts of the costume are done, so I’ll be able to use it in the future!

(3) Improve my embroidery skills.  

QUASI-WIN.  I did make new embroidery files and updated old ones to improve the quality, but not nearly as much as I would have liked.  I am learning and getting better, but I still have a lot to explore in this field.

(2) Finish my trench coat UFO.  

Probably a fail…  I’m pretty busy, but I’ve still got a few days to make something happen!

(1) 2018: The Year of Sew Geeky!

QUASI-WIN.  I had lots of goals with this project, so let’s look at this goal in more detail…

Create 4 seasonal capsule style wardrobes.

QUASI-WIN.  I was able to sew one mini-capsule, and a few pieces from my fall plans.  I didn’t manage to make anything from Summer or Winter plans.

Choose one Geeky Inspiration from movies, TV shows, books, etc. to help me come up with a general “theme” for the collection.  Right now I’ve got a lot of possible inspirations to choose from, and I’m trying to narrow it down, and slot everything into areas where I’ll find a good match of seasonal pieces, fabrics, and colors.

WIN!  I really enjoyed choosing the themes for each capsule and coming up with patterns and color palettes for each season.

Use the ideas from the Craftsy course Sew to Flatter: Plan Your Best Wardrobe to choose what types of garments to make and what fabrics will coordinate well to sew.

QUASI-WIN.  I did use my color fans to create coordinated color palettes, which was good,  but I haven’t really gone through and pulled/culled my fabric collection, which really needs it.  I do think I will use the fans to create more coordinated color plans in the future though.

Choose styles and silhouettes that fit into the “classic” mode, but up the game with details inspired by my geeky fandoms.

FAIL.  But it was an important fail.  My chosen patterns worked really well to communicate the inspiration fandom (at least in my opinion), but they definitely weren’t Kibbe’s definition of “Classic” by any means.  As it turns out, neither am I, and this experiment really helped me realize that.  A successful failure then?

Use the Curated Closet formula to come up with a color palette.  I’ll use my Winter/Bright Winter Colors, but choose color schemes that fit with my chosen inspiration.

WIN.  I loved making these color palettes, and I want to make another one for myself for next year.  I think I’ve really realized which colors I want to be the core of my wardrobe, and which colors I included more because they fit with my inspiration more than because they were “me.”

Within each seasonal sewing capsule I want to plan to make: 1-2 Coats/Jackets/Cardigans/Sweater, 1-2 Dresses, 3-4 Tops, 3-4 Bottoms

FAIL.  I made no where near this amount of clothing this year.  I think understanding this is key to making realistic goals for next year.

Sew one season ahead, one month in advance.  Where I live winter is pretty mild, and I want to take the first part of the year to plan out my capsules and finish up some of my old/current projects, so I’m not bothered that my final “season” gets cut a bit short.  If this is working for me as a strategy, I’ll likely continue with it into 2019, and if it isn’t, then it won’t matter that the last segment of this plan is a bit short. 

QUASI-WIN.  I did start my sewing “on season,” though this really meant I had to miss out on sewing some of my capsules, because the majority of my sewing tends to be for others during the summer/winter.  I also realize I don’t really need fall clothes until the last week of October, realistically, so summer sewing could have been a bit extended. 

Hopefully I’ll use Pinterest to create a mood board, and Polyvore to play around with outfit ideas, as I’d like to utilize these resources more effectively.

QUASI-WIN.  I used Pinterest a lot, which has been great, but Polyvore ceased to exist this year.  I’ve been trying to use Shoplook to fill in, but early difficulties with adding personal images made it much less useful than Polyvore was for creating outfits from sewing pattern garment images.

Incorporate pieces I already have in my wardrobe plans where I can.  Although I plan to sew as many of the 8-12 pieces as possible, and the ultimate goal is to have more of a me-made wardrobe that I love to wear, it doesn’t make sense if I can’t also use other things I already own with the new pieces.  Items I already have might be considered “bonus items,” but would be included in the capsule planning.

QUASI-WIN. This would have worked best with my summer plans, which I wasn’t able to get to at all, but I did plan to incorporate these pieces, so I think partial points there?

Final Take-Aways

I really, really enjoyed doing the planning for the Sew Geeky Challenge, and I’m still sad about a lot of the pieces I didn’t get to make.  I realize how over-ambitious these plans were, and so I hope to be more realistic in my plans for next year.  I also hope to figure out a way to incorporate some of the pieces I didn’t have a chance to make this year. Even though I wasn’t as successful at making all of the garments I wanted to, I do consider this year an overall success, because I feel like I learned a lot about what I want my style to be.  I feel like I needed to take this step of pulling inspiration from outside sources to really help me make cohesive plans, and that I learned a lot from this exercise.  But I also feel like this was sort of a stepping stone to help me realize what I want my style to be, and that I don’t need to pull looks from characters I love to achieve that.  I think it’s been a journey of self discovery more than a feat of output, but I also feel like that’s what I needed this year.  Looking ahead I’ll hopefully be making slightly more achievable goals and plans, but for now I’m quite happy with what I’ve learned this year, and the direction it’s allowing me to go.  My sewing plans for next year will be coming up soon, so stay tuned!