#canadiancapsulechallenge @couturious

I’ve been working on it! As with any sewing challenge, I start and I finish … well I finish maybe 6 months after the deadline! 🙂

It seems like at the beginning and the middle of the year I get in a kind of a “spring cleaning” kind of mood. Everything in the house sitting idle must go! Need I say, my husband has almost ended up in the pile a couple of times! 😉

So when I came across @couturious on IG I just had to pay attention to her #canadiancapsulechallenge. I’m going to walk through my process slowly … as I am sewing through my process slowly too. You can get all the details by following @couturious on IG.

First I came to the realization that now that I was retired, I didn’t need all my “office stuff”. I do need some nice dresses, slacks etc., but not as much as before, so I hit the closet … hard …

Here you can see photos of the “Closet Before”, the “Bed Pile” and the “Closet After”. I put the hangers backwards so I can see which clothes I actually wear over the next few months, because they will be on the hangers that are hung correctly when I put them back. In a few months, I’ll see what still hasn’t been worn at all and can still be donated! Final photo, the bag for “Charity”. All good clothes, no chance I will be wearing them due to change in lifestyle, sizing, etc.

It is really horrifying how much STUFF some of us have in this country. STUFF we don’t even use. At least I can say that I sewed it all as my hobby/business, it is quality STUFF and if someone doesn’t use it then it will be a waste. I really really dislike waste! So off to Charity it goes!

I decided to focus my “capsule” on casual wear and to work on my colours, since I’m stuck in a “shades of blue” rut. I noticed I had A LOT of blues, so my capsule would be made up of the blues and blacks I already had and I would add some shades of purple to it. My new colour!

For my version of the #canadiancapsulechallenge, I was challenged to find three each – pants, tees, cardigans or hoodies – that might work together and with my goal of a casual capsule. Here are my already made items from my closet – black jeans, black yoga pants (that I have to replace as these are too worn), two print tees and a cardigan. So I need another pair of pants, another tee, and two cardigans or hoodies.

I purchased some knit fabrics from Our Social Fabric, a wonderful non-profit fabric store which sells donated deadstock fabric. Nothing better than keeping fabric out of the landfills! Here is a purple print Heathered Peached Jersey (Lycra) for my new tee, a solid dark purple Viscose Waffle Sweater Knit for a new cardigan, and a solid black Lycra Leggings Knit to replace my yoga pants.

I pulled from my stash a solid navy knit for a hoodie (not pictured) and a light blue light weight cotton denim for some pants.

I have decided on most the patterns I will use. The light blue denim will be Helen’s Closet Arden pants. I have been waiting to make this pattern FOREVER and it just hasn’t happened. Well it will now! Not sure of the hoodie pattern but here are a couple of basic ones! Then the tee. For the yoga pants I am going to use the same pattern that I used before.

Now an important part of the #canadiancapsulechallenge is also altering, repairing or repurposing what you already have – no waste! So I pulled out my mending and fixed the seam of my favourite shirt. I also repurposed four knit dresses, that were not often worn, into tees that I could use in my casual capsule.

After cutting the dresses down to the correct tee length, and hemming with binding, two of the dresses were repurposed into tees. With two of the dresses, I saved the bottom of the dress and used it as a ruffle on the bottom of the tee!

Ta Dah! Four new usable tees (and one set of cat’s ears photo bombing)!

What’s next in my #canadiancapsulechallenge? I’m going to have to replace those worn black yoga pants and I think I am going to make myself two pairs! Stay tuned for the next blog post!

Thank you for reading and commenting!

Happy Sewing!

Stash busting with this project? – Nope! I was a bad girl! I did repurpose four dresses and repair and mend a few things, including my favourite shirt, but … my 117 metres has been added to by 8.5 metres:

• 2.5 metres of Viscose Waffle Sweater Knit for my dark purple cardigan
• 2 metres of Heathered Peached Jersey (Lycra) for my purple print tee
• and 4 metres of Black Lycra Leggings Knit for FOUR pairs of black yoga pants – then I decided I would only make TWO! That’s ok, at least I’ll have it in my stash for another project!

I will be using approximately 2.5 metres of light blue light weight cotton denim from my fabric stash for my Arden pants and approximately 2 metres of solid navy knit from my fabric stash for my hoodie, but that’s all in the future. I’ll keep you updated though! 🙂