Doctor T Designs

My recovery from the effects of COVID have been slow, and other summer events have been wiping out whatever small amounts of energy I’ve had remaining the past few months. But I do love a good Pattern Review Contest, and the Mini Wardrobe challenges always get me thinking. Since I was sort of floating in a sea of sewing ennui, I figured making plans for this challenge would be helpful. I now find myself sort of mildly excited about getting some projects underway. Though I do know it is absolutely foolhardy to post sewing plans to the internet lest they never come to be, it’s really the only sewing related anything I’ve done all summer, so here we are.

Back in 2018 I had very elaborate mini wardrobe capsule plans as part of a personal Sew Geeky Challenge. While these plans ultimately did not produce the large collections I was hoping for (because I was and still am very bad at being realistic with time), I did very much enjoy creating themed wardrobe plans that were inspired by some of my fandoms. I will also say that, at least for the garments that still fit, the items I made as part of those collections are still my favorite go-to garments today. So it seemed like it might be fun to do something similar to find inspiration for the 5-piece garment set for the Mini Wardrobe Challenge starting in August.

I’m going to preface this by saying I’m a much larger fan of Wheel of Time as a book series as opposed to the TV show, and the way I envisioned the costumes from the books are decidedly different from how I think they decided to portray them in the show. However, I can appreciate aspects of the more modern vibe we get from the show and I think the Amazon adaptation is probably a better starting point in terms of adapting the costumes to a modern wardrobe, and definitely easier to visualize as opposed to “blue silk with slashes of cream and skirts divided for riding” (this is not an actual quote, but might as well be… if you know you know).

So, since this was a mini-collection, I decided to focus the inspiration on just a single character of Moiraine. It’s interesting because as a younger reader, I really liked Moiraine but I definitely identified much more with other characters (Nyneave and Aviendha will always be favorites), but in my current re-read I find that I really identify much more with Moiraine. Plus, using this inspiration is an excuse to sew a lot of blue fabrics, which I am definitely here for. I’m not really picking specific looks to recreate from the show, but rather looking at all of her costumes as a general inspirational vibe:

The requirements for the PR challenge are to create 2 tops, 2 bottoms, and 1 garment of choice that can be anything that goes with the collection (dress, jumpsuit, topper, or another top or bottom piece to mix in). I could have easily done a 7-10 piece collection, but for this challenge I wanted to focus on wearable separates that I could use if I needed to go to into the office but also just in general. My immediate wardrobe needs keep changing (because my office/WFH situation keeps changing), but I find that I’m constantly wearing the same 6 garments from my wardrobe, so expanding options a bit is definitely called for. Especially in the area of knit tops (my go-to) and non-jeans bottoms. Right now I’m looking at using the following patterns for my mini-collection:

I wanted to try and have two very different styles of trousers to try and give the impression of both the tighter fitted riding trousers from the first few episodes and the wider skirts and trousers from the later half of the season. The tops were chosen to mimic the cross over top and give the impression of the bolero styles, and finally the Kwik Sew topper vest is meant to be a more wearable version of the traveling cloak. I had a few patterns I was debating between but when making the choice of wearable vs. costume-y, I went with wearable as the deciding factor. Full on costumes and cosplay are not out of the question in the long-term sewing plans, but that’s not the goal with this collection. I’m still working on fabric selections, but of course everything will be in different shades of blue.

Also, because I love to play around with My Body Model sketches to see how everything will coordinate, I made the following drawing:

So now that I have declared my plans to the internet, I of course now must go about actually trying to complete them… wish me luck!