Handwork – Page 21 – Deborah Makarios

May 11, 2018

Wardrobe Architect 5: Your Colour Story

(Or Color Story, for our American readers.)

Having considered our unfavourite colours earlier in the week, we now turn to a more pleasant task: choosing our favourites.

There’s no worksheet for this month, but if you pop across to the Colette page you will find a few suggestions for ways to gather your favourite colours, and ways to collate them (mostly digital, for the technically inclined).

Suggestions for bringing your favourite colours to mind include: What colours are suggested by the words you gathered in Month 2? What colours are the garments you most often wear? What colours are you drawn to in other areas of life?

There is also the matter of deciding which colours suit you, and whether you’re going to limit yourself to those or not. Myself, I use the “reflective power of colour” instead of wearing makeup, so I value having colours that look good on me. Others may prefer to just go with whatever colours they like, irrespective of the resulting aesthetics – it’s a personal choice. For those who do want to find out what colours may suit them, I’ve found this site helpful. (Shopping in natural light with a frank friend can also be useful.)

Being (as far as I can tell) a Deep Autumn, I go for warm, rich, muted colours. The aforementioned site lists 22 suggested colours, some of which are Definitely Not Me (bright yellow, lime bronze, hot turquoise…). But choosing colours which suit you shouldn’t exclude wearing colours you like – there should be a Venn diagram arrangement, with you dressing yourself out of the overlap in the middle.

So, let’s start piling up some colours! You can use fabric samples, paint chips, art supplies, scissors applied to magazines – anything you like, just pile up them colours. The more the merrier.

My pile looks like this:
dark chocolatey brown (most browns, actually)
plum
buttery yellow (not too yellow!)
the natural creamy colour of unbleached calico
all the rich reds of blood and paprika and leather book-bindings
forest green
deep rose
calm lavendery blue (it makes me feel peaceful but look ghastly)
hazel green
deep gold
aubergine
mahogany
and coppery bronze.

And what do we do with this pile of colours? We hoard them… and we wait till next month, when the raw material begins to become something more.

What’s in your pile of favourite colours?

April 27, 2018May 2, 2018

Upskilly & Stuff 4: the Nightgown

What an educational experience! she says, with a mad glint in her eye. Turns out it was not the murders but the sewing of nightgowns that pushed Lady Macbeth over the edge.

Continue & Comment

April 13, 2018

Wardrobe Architect 4: Proportions & Silhouettes

I must admit I struggled with this month’s exercises. In the first place, there’s the confusion of the terminology. Both ‘proportions’ and ‘silhouettes’ seem to be referring to the shape of garments that you wear together. Jeans + t-shirt + sneakers, for example. I might call it an ensemble, but regardless of the label you choose, that’s what we’re talking about.

The second problem I had is that at first I could only think of one ensemble that I wear – leaving aside for the nonce such things as headwear (always) and footwear (socks and slippers, mostly; shoes or boots outside).
I wear a long-sleeved full-length dress pretty much every day. But there are variations on the theme. With or without belt; with or without cardigan/jersey; skirt full or straighter. Occasionally short sleeves in summer.

Then I realized that there are other ensembles I wear – sometimes. Tunic over full skirt, tunic over loose trousers, tunic over laplap (straight wrap skirt). But I don’t want to include these in my wardrobe architecting, much as I enjoy wearing them, because they leave me stranded without pockets (cue Scarlett-O’Hara-at-intermission moment again).

What else is there? Then I remembered: one of my dresses has fasteners all the way down the front (it was designed to be a throw-on layer over less-modest clothing), and I often wear it half-open over a full skirt, in a vaguely Elizabethan sort of way.

As the dress contains the all-important pockets, this is a satisfactory outfit, even allowing for different combinations – had I more than one of each sort of garment, which I don’t. I have occasionally worn the dress with loose trousers and a tunic or long slip, but there comes a point where you wonder if you are still wearing a dress, or just adding a light coat with convenient pockets.

Of course, if we’re talking about what we’d like to wear, I’d love a dress designed to look like a full skirt and matching waistcoat, which could then be worn over a variety of shirts – allowing for a simplicity approaching or even exceeding that of my husband’s wardrobe.

Not that I have ever seen such a dress, mind you, in person or otherwise. But I have hopes that one day, as I pursue my sewing endeavours, I will eventually gain the necessary skills to make myself one of these dream-dresses (with perhaps a matching jacket).

What are your favourite ensembles (/silhouettes/proportions)? What ensembles do you as yet only dream of?