Happy New Year !

2011 will be over in a couple of hours and 2012 will begin. I can't wait to start the new year ! With every new year I make plans what to achieve and what to improve in the next. This year I have three main goals :

• Live more sustainable and healthy. Means buy more vegetables and fruits grown locally, reduce buying plastic, cook more and don't eat out that often anymore ( no fast food)
• Reduce spending for fabrics. I have a stash that, if I use all the fabrics, will keep me occupied for at least half a year. So I want to try to use as much of it and only buy fabrics if I can't make a similar garment from my stash.
• Exercise more. I know, I know that is something everybody plans every year but I really want to give it a try. I'm gonna move to another city in February and it is very well connected with bike lanes. I want to take the bike out more often and reduce the time I spend in busses or trains.

My wardrobe or should I better say my two wardrobes ?

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When it comes to my closet I like to distinguish it into two parts. On the one side there are the store-bought items and then on the other hand there are the handmade garments. While analyzing what I have I had to find out that I own many things – 232 to be exact ( excluding socks and tights, underwear,simple tanktops,sports wear, sleepwear and everything that is in the laundry right now). From these items 29 % are handmade, a number that I estimated to be a little bit higher considering my sewing output in the recent years. Interesting is the fact that more than 50% of my tops and blouses are handmade whereas I only have one pair of trousers that I made. This probably results from the fact that trousers in my size which I find in the sewing magazines are often not my size and I’m not that confident enough yet to draft my own. But that’s something I definitely want to change next year.

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Analyzing my wardrobe and seeing in numbers how many items I own made me think about my life as a consumer, or more specifically as a producing consumer the so called prosumer. For me “make do and mend” is nothing that only recently came into my mind. I was raised by my parents in such a way that they always tried to let us be creative and make things with our own little hands. Nintendo, Disney or computer games were not of interest to my brother and me. As a child it was normal for me to draw and play self-invented games with toys that I made. My dolls got new clothes made out of paper and the 2 or 3 barbies that I owned got new haircuts and strands of felt-pen dyed hair. My mother would make knitted sweaters for me and after watching her knit I was taught by her to do the simple stitches myself. Knitting Jenny became my new pal and when I was about 13 I knitted my first and so far only finished garment- a simple sweater. Soon after that I also started sewing. I can’t remember anymore why I started, maybe it was because the things in the store didn’t appeal to me anymore or because I wanted to have things that nobody else had. My first garment was a 7 panel A-line skirt in a cotton lawn printed with small flowers and ladybugs. Seams were not totally straight and I finished the seams only with a pinking shear but it was a great skirt that no one else had. In the next years I got through several stages. I had a time period where I would make bag after bag and then skirt after skirt. Often I would be sitting behind the sewing machine for the whole weekend only stopping when there was lunch or dinner.

This year I started to lower my output and began to try out different techniques. I made my first French Seams this year and can’t believe that I never thought about using them before. I also try to make more sensible fabric purchases and concentrate on high quality but for a reasonable price. I still think that I don’t want to spend more on a handmade garment than what I would pay for it in a store ( H&M or Zara). But I like to be able to get inspired by high-end designers and then make my own version for a fraction of the price.

In recent years I also found out more about production in foreign countries and labor abuse. I read many articles on the internet, watched documentaries and read books like “To Die for” by Lucy Siegle. The deeper I got into the topic, the more I was put off by the fashion industry. But the more I found out about the DIY movement and the enourmous variety of online communities like Burdastyle and craftster, I figured that I don’t have to consume like the majority of people and support the fashion industry. The handmade and second-hand pledge for 2011 was one of the first steps on my way to becoming a more sensible consumer.

The second step will be to find out what my needs are. As I mentioned in the beginning of this text I own 41 blouses. Is there really a need for more ? How often do I wear any blouse per year ? When I combine this with the number of trousers and jeans that I own, putting together an outfit with two items how many combinations are possible ? I tried to calculate it but don’t know the formula anymore, but I’m sure that there are more possibilities to combine than there are days of the year.

So next I’m going to evaluate what my needs and wants are. More on that later.

My Handmade Year

I started this blog in Mai but in January I started an even bigger project. For the year 2011 I made the pledge to only buy second-hand clothing or make the items myself (excluding socks and underwear). Now we approach the end of the year and it's time to review how this project worked out.
I'm very satisfied because with just one exception I managed to live by the pledge. The only item I purchased which wasn't second-hand was this t-shirt.

 

But by buying this t-shirt I supported my favourite music festival, the Rheinkultur in Bonn. Because of all the donations and sales of their t-shirts they raised enough money to have the festival in 2011. Of course I wanted to support them as well, so I got the shirt. And of course I went to the festival and managed to be in the first row seeing Razorlight live. I could almost touch Johnny Borrell ! Definitely one of my favourite moments of 2011.

Unfortunalety the festival had to announce later this year that the debt couldn't be paid off and that there won't be another festival in 2012. That is a pity but since I won't live in the area next year anymore I'm not that bothered.

Coming back to my pledge. Mönchengladbach and Düsseldorf have a good variety of second-hand shops so it was not difficult to find things that I liked. Originally I wanted to decrease my spending on clothes and only purchase goods which I really needed, but often I couldn't pass the shop and not buy anything. This is something I definitely want to change next year. I haven't yet fully decided in which direction my resolution for 2012 will go, but consuming less and consuming more sensible are directions that I might choose.

My favourite purchases for the year have to be a pair of black leather boots ( from Oxfam for 7 € ),a grey sweater ( from Oxfam for 7,50€ ) and a pair of flares( from Goodwill in San Francisco, it reminds me of the holiday in the USA everytime I wear it ).

As you can see they are all quite basic and I really needed them in my wardrobe that consisted of a lot of items that were beautiful but difficult to combine. I have a simple navy A-line skirt in the making which will look great with the grey sweater and the boots. It will also be good to combine with my blouses.

My favourite handmade items of the year are my "shoe blouse", my mustard A-line skirt and my black maxi skirt. Anyway I love all the items that I made. I rarely produce UFOs, though there is a cut but never sewn item in my sewing studio. It is the pattern for a blouse and I only have half of the instructions and I'm too lazy to figure out how to start and put it together.

Only in the end of the year I started to plan what I needed in my wardrobe and form my own capsule collection. I often sew whatever garment comes into my mind and don't think about whether it can be combined to the things that I already own. Definitely something I want to change next year. In the next two weeks I will think about what I want to achieve in the next year and keep you updated on my plans.

Me-made Mittwoch again

Cardigan: me-made
Top: H&M
Jeans: me-altered
Boots: Deichmann

Finally I got around to take a picture of my Wednesday-Outfit. I already wrote about my plan to make a two tone cardigan and here it is. I used a self-drafted pattern that is a combination of a well fitting dress bodice and sleeves and an altered front part. I used the pattern for some other cardigans as well. Somehow the sleeve didn't fit into the armhole so I had to make some small pleats. It gives the sleeve now a slightly puffed look.I left the selvage raw because I didn't want to create some bulk there. Maybe I need to change that later because it tends to fray a bit. I have some fabric left and think about making a two tone skirt as well. Unfortunalety the green and mustard are already sold out at stoffe.de but they still have it in a shade of white.
As I'm taking part in me-made Mittwoch again you can see who else is particpating here. 

I cut the Ikat

Pullover: thrifted
Skirt: me-made
Boots: Siemes
Scarf: me-made
Well, actually the title is wrong because this is a Navajo print and not Ikat, but I couldn't resist playing with the words. The skirt was sewn quite quickly, since it's just a front and a back with two darts on each piece. The matching of the print went quite well too and with the leftover fabric I made the loop.
Now I'm off to craft come christmas cards.

Things I want to do before the year ends

It's already the 7th of December and soon the year 2011 will be over. Next year will be exciting as I will hopefully finish my studies and start a new chapter of my life. So, I want to enjoy the last days of this year as much as possible and create things that will remind me of this year. This year has been so great to me, I want to end it on a high note. Here are the plans of what I want to accomplish in the remaining 24 days of the year 2011.

• finish the cardigan that has been in the works for nearly a year now
• craft christmas cards for all the people who made the year so special
• attach bias tape to the shoe blouse so that it can be washed
• think about my wardrobe and evaluate which items are missing
• organize my stash and plan what to make of the fabrics
• find out which proportions work best for my body taking this as my inspiration
• don't forget to open the doors of my christmas calendar

We'll see if I make everything happen, but I guess it's already good to think about what you want to do even if you can't fulfill all the things. Do you have any sewing or craft related plans for the upcoming months ?