A 100 Day Dress

I decided a while ago that I wanted to start a long term project, something that I could do a little at a time, each day. I’ve seen people’s 100 day projects on Instagram, and I liked that as a structure for my project. My first thought, inspired strongly by Tiny*Stitches*Miri, was embroidery on a garment. I thought about upcycling/refashioning, but in the end I settled on an Alabama Chanin inspired new make, though I’m not going to claim it’s proper AC style. I want it to have some embroidery, some appliqué, some reverse appliqué, some beading/sequinning. I don’t imagine for one moment that it will be elegantly stylish, because it’s going to have so many bits of everything, and it will all be a bit random. But hopefully the colour scheme will pull everything together, and it will be interesting to look at.

I’ll be using the pale blue jersey from FC Fabric Studio which I bought in the Spring, and the Shannon dress pattern, as I didn’t want to have to mess about with a new pattern. I’ve bought a number of embroidery silks for this project, but everything else will be from stash (there are a LOT of blue beads in the massive bead/sequin stash).

Blues

This all starts at the weekend, on Saturday. If I’ve done my maths right, the 100 days will be up on 31st December.

I’ve set up a dedicated instagram account for this make, with the idea being to record every day’s progress.

Stashwatch – Summer Check-in

My stashwatching this year has been very feast-and-famine! Months of self-restraint followed by indulgence days. Let’s look at the goals:

1.  To catalogue my costume fabric stash and transfer suitable fabrics to my real life fabric stash.

Hasn’t happened yet. I’ve started, but there’s still a binbag-ful to go through!

2.  To use up 12 items from stash and to review this aim in the summer.

I’ve used up 12 items so far, and I’ve got another 3 works in progress, to be finished on my holidays, which should take it up to 15. So I feel I’m doing quite well this year. I’m updating this goal to: using up 21 items from stash by the end of this year.

3. To refashion 6 garments. 

Nothing so far. Must do better.

I started beading a t-shirt, and I’m hoping to get it finished on holiday. That’s a start.

4. To not buy any new fabric until I’ve used up at least 6 stash items.

I failed on this, but I did make sure that I caught up with myself within a couple of days, by way of compensation. So although it was a technical fail, it was a moral win.

Having caught up, and sewn three more stash pieces up, I felt I could happily go on a fabric buying trip to Walthamstow Market, at the end of May, which added 7 more bits of fabric to the pile. A declutter also added to the stash, because I came across bits and bobs of fabric that I’d forgotten all about. And when I get around to cataloguing the costume stash, that may also add to the pile. At the moment the stash is standing at around 26 items; I’d like to see it coming down to 20 or so.

So I’m updating this goal to: not buying any new fabric until the end of the year. I’ve got plenty of ideas for the material that I’ve got. I will allow myself fabric swaps (but trying to keep it stash-neutral), and I’ll accept gifts of fabric if offered (because it’s churlish to refuse), but I won’t buy any more, nor enter competitions, prize draws or giveaways, just in case I win them.:

5. To keep WIPs to no more than 3 throughout the year. If I feel like starting a fourth, I need to consider whether I should finish of any of the other three first, or let one of them go.

So far, so good. I sewed up two of my start of year WIPs, and was ahead of myself for a while, but in readiness for holiday sewing, I’m building up a set of things that just need a bit of hand-sewing to finish, so I’m currently at 4 WIPs, and hoping to make it a couple more by Thursday morning! But by the end of the hols, I should be back to only one WIP.

It’s been interesting to reflect on my year’s progress so far, and although it doesn’t feel like I’m bringing my stash levels down, I realise I’ve been quite productive and done quite a lot towards using the fabrics I’ve got in the way I originally intended, or sometimes, changing my ideas around and making something different that I hadn’t expected.