This summer my family and I are going on a holiday of a lifetime to Australia for 3 weeks: 4 days in Singapore, a week in Perth, a week in Sydney and the rest at the Great Barrier Reef. This adds up to 21 days of travelling. When I travel, instead of picking up fridge magnets and key rings as souvenirs I pick up fabric, and I have been assured that Singapore at least is a treasure trove for fabric. I was slightly concerned about fitting all of my new fabric in my suitcase to take home with me so my plan is to take a practically empty suitcase to fill up as we go from place to place.
This called for a capsule wardrobe. My challenge is to wear a different outfit for each of the 21 days from 13 pieces of clothing. This will be made more difficult by Singapore's summer weather and Australia's winter weather. The reason I'm planning so far ahead is because I actually only possess 2 of the 13 pieces of clothing. If it makes it slightly better I do own the fabric for 5 of the 11 remaining pieces. Plus I own all of the patterns apart from 1 so that isn't too bad.
Whilst planning and preparing my capsule wardrobe I focused on a specific colour palette. White and navy are my neutrals. Olive is my nearly neutral and purple and other blues are my accent colours.
For my outerwear I've chosen to make a navy lace bomber jacket (underlined with a ponte knit). For this I'm going to use the hoodie pattern from Sew U Home Stretch without the hood.
I already own an olive jacket but because it's supposed to be a mens jacket it has no waist definition so I do want to sew bias binding around where my natural waistline hits so I can thread cord through it.
The last item of outerwear is going to be a purple Victoria blazer which is the item that I need to buy the pattern for. I'm planning to make this out of purple ponte for comforts sake and to minimise wrinkles from being in a suitcase.
Tops (row 2)
I chose to use shirts instead of t-shirts because I feel more together in them and also because I can tuck them into skirts and knot them on top of dresses making them super versatile. I already have a refashioned white shirt and am planning to make the navy one using the archer pattern using a navy bed-sheet I found in the charity shop for 2.50. I'm also planning to make a bustier using an amazing navy and green floral fabric found in the charity shop for 3.99 for 2 metres. Obviously I couldn't let that one go. I'm also planning to make matching shorts to go with it so it can be a super cute playsuit.
Bottoms (row 3)
I'm planning to make 2 basic half circle skirts in ponte knit which will be super comfy and easy to travel in. Highwaisted jeans are also on the cards as I love wearing jeans, but only high-waisted ones work on my and I don't currently own any! I have some size 18 jeans from the charity shop which cost 3.50 and I'm going to cut a new pair out of.
Dresses (row 4)
The first dress will be a classic fit and flare dress using my sloper and I'm really looking forward to doing some interesting dart manipulation with the stripes on the bodice. The navy dress is gathered into a yoke with an A line silhouette. I've been really wanting these looser dresses for hot days so this should be perfect. The purple dress is the same kinda thing apart from the angled yoke and the cross over straps. I'm planning to use this awesome purple tie-dye fabric that I inherited from my Grandma. Both dresses I'm planning to draft using my sloper as a base.
I did some basic drawings on photoshop all drawn to fit a croquis so could create outfits by making the things I wanted visible and the things I didn't want visible could be made invisible. To see how useful certain items would be I created every outfit possible with them. The items that could only be worn with a few items were nixed. I'm so sad that the wide legged polka dot linen trousers didn't make it. They were going to be SO GOOD. Maybe when I've finished making all of this lot...
Here's an example of the outfits I made to go with the white shirt.
That's all my thoughts on capsule wardrobes so far. Expect to see some of these items cropping up in the near future!
Thanks so much for reading!
Lauren xx