sewing plan: summer 2023

Guess who forgot to actually schedule this post last week and didn't notice until today? I'm good at this. 

As I said in my last post, my spring plan ended up being almost entirely failures. I got pretty demoralised for a while and was struggling to get my head round planning for summer at all. Eventually in a burst of motivation (read: procrastinating something else I didn't want to do) I cleared out my sewing supplies cupboard, reorganised all the fabric, recategorised my patterns and threw out or donated the ones that were just taking up space, worked through half my alterations pile to give me a bit more space, and then reevaluated. I feel a bit better about things now, and here's what I've come up with: 

Trouser Blitz

The Trouser Blitz is going to be my main summer project. I've been saying for almost a full year that I need trousers, I still do not have trousers (not entirely through lack of trying, but still). I've got about ten pieces of fabric that could be used for such a purpose, and I've gone through my entire pattern stash to separate out all the trouser patterns I currently own, both tested and untested. I want to pair everything up and work my way through them all. There are a few potential additions to what I already have: some nice black ponte to make another pair of Audrey cigarette pants, some stretch denim to try out a jeans pattern, and some viscose for floaty trousers of some kind if it turns out to be a really hot summer. 

Here is a picture of all my fabric options. I already cut two of them out, hence them being represented by piles of scraps. Sorry about that. 

The three fabrics on the left are the wools I've been avoiding cutting into because a) expensive and b) less of them, so I can't make the more fabric-hungry patterns I know will work. These will probably be the last ones to get made up, but I will do at least one if not all three by the end of the summer. Yes, I'm planning to make wool trousers in summer. What of it? I haven't paired any of these to patterns yet. 

The next four are the nice but not desperately precious fabrics. There's some green needlecord, some really lovely navy crepe (I wasn't at all sure about making a second pair of navy trousers, but my trusted dude at Walthamstow led me straight to it without even knowing I was there looking for trouser fabric, so it's happening), some leopard print viscose and the white linen from my friend's mum's stash. The latter two are cut out - the viscose will be a pair of summer weight Lucille trousers and the linen my first attempt at Vogue 8191. I'm dubious about being a white linen trousers person, but we're going to try it. I've made no decisions about the other two yet. 

The two on the right are testers. One is a green stretch crepe that's been languishing in my stash for years and years, and honestly I still don't know what to do with it. Because it's stretch and none of the other fabrics are, I worry it's not going to be very useful as a test run for any of the other projects. But also I want it out of my stash. I might use it for a closer-fitting pair. The other is an old duvet cover, which I'm hoping I can get multiple tests out of. The only thing I'm certain I want to do with it is make a couple of mock-ups of my trouser block and see if I can adjust the pattern for my current size. 

Other projects

A Sallie jumpsuit. I'm going to make what I was originally planning my second-ever Sallie to be back in 2016, with a black trouser portion and a bodice made from this particular Art Gallery print:

(which seemed to be sold out everywhere at the time but is freely available now). In an ideal world I would get hold of some plain black Art Gallery for the bottoms, but so far I've not been successful in finding any. If I haven't found any by July I'll get something else instead. 

A summer maxi dress or two. I can hear you saying Jen, you cannot possibly need summer maxi dresses but I do, thanks to size changes and wearing some of them literally to death. What I really want is to straight-up remake my green Kielo, which I miss dearly, but I have yet to find a suitable bright green jersey. I actually don't have any summer dress fabric currently, but without wanting to tempt fate that's one thing I don't tend to struggle to find. 

A couple of basic tops. This one is a bit nebulous at the moment because I won't quite know what I want until I have a couple of successful pairs of trousers. I will almost certainly end up with at least one more black top, but my real focus is being able to make slightly more interesting colour combinations. I'm very used to making and wearing 'statement' trousers and almost none of my planned projects are that, and I've spotted that when I wear a plain black top with a subdued pair of trousers my brain assumes I'm feeling a bit depressed today. So variety in colour and silhouette is what I'm going for. 

A light summer cover-up. It's been sunny and beautiful in London lately, and I've realised that all my warmer weather jackets are still quite heavy. It's too warm to actually need a jacket, but if I'm sitting outside I don't want my skin exposed to the sun all day. What I want is something casual, cropped, unlined, breathable fabric, light or bright colour. I bought a pashmina in a Galician market in like 2006 or something which I continue to use as a cover-up to this day and is a bright ice blue, and in my head I'm looking for fabric that colour (I don't know why it goes with literally everything and makes me look like some kind of colour story wizard, but it absolutely does). I am almost certainly not going to find a fabric that colour, so it's going to be 'whatever grabs me'. 

You might notice that unlike previous plans, I've been much less strict with myself about having the fabric already this time. This may or may not work, and I'm prepared for the possibility that it doesn't, but I want to experiment with this for a couple of different reasons. First, after my last very frustrating plan I'd like to have a way to change things up if things start going wrong again. I think being able to put aside a run of unsuccessful projects and say "right, I'm going shopping and I'm going to find a piece of fabric that inspires me to make a dress" would be really good for me, and if it's already on the plan it will still feel like I'm working towards the goals I originally set for myself. Second, I would like to know if I have the option to do things this way now. I don't think I'll ever make a plan that's entirely or even mostly fabric I don't already have, but now that I'm medicated for my ADHD I'm hoping I might have a little bit more freedom. I'm a little bit more able to organise and schedule projects now (most of my spring plan failed but almost all of it got done, except the slip dress where the pattern turned out not to have the one specific thing I'd bought it for), and I think I'm a little more able to shop with a purpose now. 

Technically I have a couple of finished things to photograph and post about, but I've given myself a bit of a mental block after trying to photograph multiple failed projects at once and then (obviously) not liking any of the photos. I'm hoping to get my head round that this week before life starts getting mega-busy again, though at this point I know better than to make promises. But soon! Actual finished projects that I'm happy with!