Because everything I’ve bought or sewed in these 12 months has had to pull its weight, probably the #1 most important thing I’ve taken away from FOTR is the 90% rule: 90% of my wardrobe needs to equip me for my real life, not my fantasy life. Therefore, no matter how fun it is to perv out on patterns for 1930s bias-cut evening gowns and whatnot, I need to focus 90% of the money, time and effort I put into sewing and shopping time on clothing for my real life. This has been a hard lesson to internalize.

Living on a clothing and fabric ration has forced me to look hard at what clothes I actually wear in order to make every clothing purchase and sewing project count. It turned out that I’d bought and sewn a lot of clothing I never wore because it didn’t suit me or wasn’t comfortable. Mostly I’d bought or sewn it out of wishful love for for the fantasy lifestyle or body shape it suited.

[You mean I will never actually wear that pink chiffon ballgown with 6-foot detachable train??]

For most of the year, this clothing sat in my wardrobe moldering gently.What I reached for, day after day after day, was clothing that fit a few basic criteria:

It must keep me warm and dry. This meant layers, natural fibers and, for most of the year, wool. Underneath, merino tights and base layers were a clear winner, as were cashmere sweaters on top and wool skirts and trousers. I fell madly in love with wool this year, actually; it really is the secret weapon against the cool, damp, changeable British climate, and generations of grannies were right about the invulnerability conferred by wearing wool next to the skin. Single violin: the legions of pretty cotton frocks, summer sundress patterns and sleeveless blouses my fellow bloggers model so beautifully will never be practical options while I live in the UK.

It must allow me to go about an average day in comfort. Unless you are Kate Middleton and can afford to take taxis everywhere, daily life in London throws a lot of unexpected physical trials your way. You can end up freezing at a bus stop, smothering in a Tube tunnel, struggling with a load of grocery bags, running for a bus, cycling on a Boris bike or standing for hours in queues, trains and crowded pubs. Your clothing must be able to cope. I love darling little heels and pretty dresses as much as the next girl, but they can become instruments of torture if worn incautiously. The vast majority of the time, comfortable shoes and warm, layerable pieces carried the day. Single violin: this effectively rules out most heels higher than kitten height, or ever leaving the house without a sweater.

It must be versatile. I adore my 1940s jitterbug dress and it is one of the prettiest things in my closet, but the situations in which I can wear it are few and far between. The two Jalie tops I made from ivory bamboo interlock, on the other hand, I have worn over and over, with skirts, work trousers and jeans.  Unsurprisingly, the most mixable items got the most wear. Single violin: farewell to most of the really drool-inducing sewing projects on my wish list, like the 1870s cuirass bodice and skirt.

It must suit my coloring and actual body size and shape. Harder to accept than it sounds, especially if you’re an inverted triangle who’s just spent hours painstakingly sewing a dress designed for an hourglass. Single violin: the wiggle dress, she and I will never be right for each other. Ditto obi belts, ruched sleeves and anything orange or purple.

It must be low- to medium-maintenance. This means no uncomfortable underpinnings, pantyhose, painful shoes, anti-static spray, elaborate hair and makeup or tit tape. The outfit must not be excessively vulnerable to wind, rain or red wine. I know this rules out huge swathes of women’s clothing, including the vintage looks I love, but what can I say? I will probably go to my grave an unregenerate tomboy. Remember Britches Dottie from the Great Brain books? That’s basically me. Single violin: Even on my super-motivated days I still don’t look as ladylike as Casey Brown phoning it in.

It must suit my actual personality. Frills are out — way out. As is pink, soft pastels, chiffon, ballet flats, Mary Janes, Alice bands, floral prints, puffed sleeves, super-slutty looks or anything uncomfortably juvenile. Like I said… tomboy. I do like feminine looks, but I like them womanly rather than girly, and with a strong spike of the masculine. (I’m digging Steph’s current interest in androgynous women’s fashion in Weimar Berlin. )

This is how frilly makes me feel inside.

Although these basic principles have long been floating murkily at the back of my mind, it feels good to make them explicit and start altering my behavior to follow them. I feel like the 90% rule will focus my efforts and save me a lot of time and money in future sewing and shopping.

Only 5 days left to go!

Leafing through wartime copies of Woman magazine, a British publication, I can’t help but admire certain aspects of the severity of UK fashion during the war. I’m not a particularly girly girl — I’ve discussed my love of a little light cross-dressing elsewhere — so I find some common fashion trends of the 1940s (frills, Peter Pan collars, puffed sleeves) hard to wear because they feel fussy and infantilizing, which is the last thing a 21st-century woman needs. But in wartime Britain nearly all women were working women, so fashion also had to focus hard on function. Before there were jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt, the tweed suit was the British woman’s Getting Things Done outfit. Really good suits often featured gloriously lean, stiletto-sharp tailoring. Check out Sherry here. She may be mad, but man does she look hot. That outfit’s as streamlined as a shark.

Actually, I feel like I’ve seen that look somewhere before.

I would love to get my hands on one of those rakish little lady-trilbies — all the vintage-inspired milliners on the internets seem to be exclusively hung up on things involving feathers and netting. And a smart little tweed SUIT! I wonder how many more years it’ll take me to feel confident making my own vintage suits.

Here’s another woman sporting some sexy cross-dressing at work (the article is a breathless military-romance story about peril in the jungle). When was the last time the ordinary woman could rock jodhpurs?

"How badly hurt are you?" Stephen asked Harriet. "I could sit in front of you on your horse," she replied. Yeah. I'll just bet you could.

Meanwhile, back on the home front, here’s a DIY design for a fabric-economical blouse with a tie waist and horizontal tucks to add bust interest. With a toned-down sleeve cap, this would make up very nicely today into a slightly boxy blouse to wear over high-waisted skinny jeans or a pencil skirt.

Here’s another article highlighting a newfound problem for women: how to stay beautiful while balancing a demanding work schedule and a personal life. Ah, the old third shift!

Here’s a glimpse into some female bedtime rituals of the time: “It’s a bitter disappointment for a man who led a glamorous bride to the altar to have to spend his life with a greasy-creamed, curling-papered, chin-strapped wife.” Very true. Men must never be exposed to the machinery of beauty. Which is why I always sedate my boyfriend with a tranquilizer dart before embarking on my nightly toilette.

The good news: smoking still okay

Speaking of real vs. ideal:

But one takeaway message from women’s magazines is the same in every era and on both sides of the Atlantic: Purify your foul, noisome lady bits!

Dettol + “delicate tissues” = AAAAAHHHH.

Looking back, I feel like I spent much of my childhood wrestling with shoddy tools. Probably the worst culprits were left-handed school scissors. Other southpaws may remember them: sticky-hinged, rusty, blunt-bladed and with handles that bit into your knuckles. They were so abysmal I eventually gave up and learned to cut right-handed. They also taught me the absolute futility of common ownership of tools. To this day, hands off my Ginghers if you know what’s good for you.

I fell in love with good tools the first time I ever used a properly sharpened chef’s knife, the kind you only have to stroke over the skin of a tomato for it to part like tearing silk. Using it instantly transformed meal preparation from drudgery into flow — a state of pleasurable absorption in which time no longer mattered. I wonder how many people think they don’t like cooking merely because most of their time in the kitchen is spent fighting against blunt knives, flimsy pans and dead stove sparkers.

Similarly, I spent my first couple of years as a home seamstress thinking I had no natural ability because I found it fiendishly difficult to achieve passable results even on seemingly simple projects. It was only later that I discovered many of my difficulties were due in large part to substandard tools — cheap plastic sewing machines, blunt shears, the wrong size needles, flimsy thread. Once I upgraded to good-quality tools, these difficulties vanished. (Which was a relief, but also meant I now had only my own ineptitude to blame when things went wrong.)

The Frister and Rossman Destiny, tool of the devil.

Sewing has a lot in common with cooking in that it requires specialized tools which might only get used a few times a year but for which there are no effective substitutes. A meal in the making can grind to a halt for lack of a grater or roasting pan; a beautiful dress can wind up in the Pile of Shame for lack of silk pins or a bias tape maker. I think this puts a lot of would-be sewers off, and I must admit that equipping a sewing room can hoover up a lot of money and time. But those of us who are even semi-serious about making our own food don’t scruple to equip our kitchens with electric mixers and turkey basters and citrus zesters, so why should we bridle at the idea of tailor’s hams, loop turners or pinking shears?

On the bright side, the tool-intensive nature of sewing gives it an element of magpie glee. You can always make an excuse to stop into a craft shop because there is always going to be something useful in there, usually at the pleasantly justifiable cost of £10 or less. Utilitarian shinies: the best of both worlds.

There are as many sewing setups as there are people who sew. I thought I’d give you a peek into mine. Here’s my sewing room, aka Atelier Catbox. Theoretically, this was meant to be a joint project room, but my sewing and I have almost completely annexed it. (Sorry, James! You snooze, you lose!) I probably should have prettied it up before taking the photo, but this at least gives you an accurate idea of what it looks like after I’ve finished a project: yes, like a cyclone hit it. Craft Rooms it’s not, but it is a happy mess.

Click through for the annoted image.

And here are some of the tools I use.

Measuring and cutting

Top to bottom: PatternMaster, Sew Easy French curve and quilter's ruler; rotary cutter, pinking shears, Gingher dressmaking shears, thread clipper, snips; sewing gauges. And measuring tape, obviously.

I mostly cut out garment pieces with shears on my living room floor, saving the rotary cutter for straight edges or small pieces, because it’s tedious trying to cut out anything larger than the cutting mat with a rotary cutter — you have to shift the mat underneath fabric and pattern, which invariably rucks everything up. The 24-inch quilters’ ruler is very useful, as it’s gridded and includes angle guides for cutting on the true bias, but I suspect it’s not 100% accurate. The Sew-Easy French curve I can’t honestly recommend for drafting — the edges feel like they’ve been hacked out with a handsaw. The PatternMaster is more useful and accurate, and comes in metric and imperial. The Fiskars snips (with gray and black handle) are excellent for clipping curves and snipping notches into seam allowances.

Pressing

Foreground to background: Sleeve board with cotton lawn and silk organza press cloths; tailor's ham; point presser/clapper; travel iron for small surfaces; spray bottle; iron with Teflon plate; feline assistant.

Pressing is a huge part of sewing, which is ironic (see what I did there?) because I have always avoided it whenever possible. I have a lot of pressing equipment, and I have to admit, grudgingly, that it makes all the difference. Sleeve boards and tailor’s hams are the kind of thing many sewers put off buying, but they are extremely useful for achieving better finish on garments. A tailor’s ham, for instance, can cure the Pointy Nipple Syndrome caused by bust darts. The spray bottle is for pressing linen or wetting press cloths; I don’t use steam from the iron very often as it’s hard to control. When I do, I fill my iron with bottled water because London tap water is so hard it can bork an iron completely within 6 months, turning it into a spluttering, limescale-spitting demon.

Marking

At left: Clover tracing wheel for use with carbon paper. Top to bottom: Hera, fine-point water-soluble marker, Chakoner chalk wheel, Sewline erasable marking pencil.

Different projects require different marking tools. The Chakoner chalk marker is probably one of the most useful sewing gadgets I own. About the same size as tailor’s chalk but much more accurate, it’s heart-shaped, refillable and fits easily in the hand, drawing a very fine line of powdered chalk using a rotating wheel. The chalk brushes off (usually). The Sewline pencil is a close second to the Chakoner; it handles like a mechanical pencil and the marks can be erased either with the eraser or with plain water.

Sewing

Bernina 830 in Horn cabinet, found on eBay. Cabinet open, sewing machine in operating position.

Cabinet closed, sewing machine lowered and stowed.

My knees literally went weak when I found this on eBay after eight months of waiting. The machine was a classic model I knew and loved, refurbished to near-mint condition. The cabinet had an airlift to raise and lower the machine, a custom insert for flatbed sewing and innumerable trays and drawers for notions. When I won the auction for just over half my maximum bid, I ran up and down the flat squealing. When the buildings across the road caught fire and we had to evacuate the house, it was harder to leave the Bernina than to leave the cat. It is my baby. (Sorry, Audrey.)

Some favorite gadgets:

Wrist pincushion

Why do I feel instantly more competent when I put this on? Who cares. No more groping for pins at a crucial moment. Constantly useful.

Scissors onna chain

Where are my scissors? James, did you take my scissors? I just had them. Goddammit, you put something down for one second in this house and… I already looked there. Are you sitting on them? Where the hell are they? Now I’m going to have to get off the couch and — oh, here they are. On this chain around my neck.

Fine point tweezers and seam ripper

Needle-nose tweezers. Good for pulling every last stray thread out of that seam you screwed up and had to unpick.

Vintage Singer hem marker

Menfolk like to pretend they don’t know how to use pins. If you haven’t got a reliable sewing buddy, here’s a good way to mark your hems accurately yourself. Adjust the red thingy to desired hem height on ruler, hold rubber bulb in hand, stand in front of marker and turn slowly in a complete circle, squeezing at intervals. The red thingy will puff a line of powdered chalk all the way around your skirt to mark your hemline. Sorted. (Avoid the Dritz/Prym hem marker as it is worse than useless.)

Simflex expandable gauge

If, like me, you are crap at getting buttonholes, tucks and pleats evenly spaced, you need one of these. It expands like an accordion to allow perfectly even marking. Watch out for pinched fingers.

The humble thimble

When I slip this on and pick up my needle, I feel like I’m taking my place among the billions of women, most of them nameless, who have stitched their way through the course of human history. Thimbles are sturdy, practical and utterly feminine. There are worse things to be.

Tell me about your tools!

The lack of any bottoms in light neutral tones is a serious gap in my wardrobe, especially in summer when black just won’t cut it. As in, I have a stupid amount of stuff I like but can’t wear because I have no beige pants. Enter EvaDress 3322, a multi-sized modern reissue of a 1940 Simplicity trouser/overall pattern.

Simplicity, you say? I know, I know. Barely two months into my no-Simplicity vow and already I’m backsliding. I tried, really I did. I ordered this sweet Hollywood slacks pattern from the unimpeachable Mom’s Patterns in March and waited weeks for it to arrive, but thanks to the vagaries of the transatlantic postal service, it never showed up. Are Royal Mail in league with the devil? Who knows. The clock was ticking — it was late May and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it English summer was due to arrive any day now. I couldn’t afford to wait for another pattern to ship from the US; I had to put shears to cloth. The Simplicity pattern was in my stash, so back to Simplicity I went.

Just to be on the safe side, I checked the measurements scrupulously to make sure there weren’t any of the wild discrepancies I’ve come to associate with Simplicity patterns and made a rare muslin before cutting into my fabric, a beige cotton/viscose twill I bought from Cloth House in Soho. It needed surprisingly little tweaking, although of course this didn’t stop me from compulsively tinkering with the fit later to the point of courting ruin. However, for my first ever pair of pants, I’m fairly happy with the result. I added big patch pockets and belt loops to soften the spartan look of the original design and give me more wearing options.

Thanks to my project dysmorphia, I could point out a whole host of problems and defects that render these pants torturously unacceptable in my eyes. BUT I WON’T, because when I debuted the pants to the two main men in my life and started to moan about all their flaws (the pants’, not the men’s), they (the men, not the pants) very sensibly told me to STFU, the pants looked great. So instead, I will tell you what I like about them and what I got right and leave my FAILs to the “Lessons Learned” section below.

I love the comfort of these pants. I cannot remember the last time I had a pair of pants that hung from my natural waist rather than from a point below it. Starting from the break at the fullest part of the hip, these pants have a lot of ease. They also have a very low crotch relative to modern pants and jeans — there’s plenty of room in there for a girdle, for instance, or a pair of old-timey French knickers. (Ooh, swishy!) These elements, combined with the drapey fabric I used, make the pants feel flowy, full and unconstricting. They churn fascinatingly along the pavement when I walk and allow a much freer range of motion in hips and legs than I’m used to after years of tight, stretch and low-rise pants. I can high-kick in these if the mood takes me (although probably not while wearing the girdle). Great for lindy hop!

I love their versatility. The high waist makes them ideal for wearing with all my 1940s blouses, and I can pair them with modern tops and sweaters to make them work- and street-appropriate, like so:

Paired with restyled thrifted Brora cashmere sweater, £12 (no coupons!)

I like the fact that I got the topstitching on the patch pockets right. “Simple” tasks like stitching a straight line are usually a minefield for me. I also like the fact that I wore these out of the house for the first time today and two people complimented me without suspecting that I’d made them.

I like the secret banjo I embroidered on the inside waistband (a detail shamelessly cribbed from the blog now known as Adventures in Couture):

I like the fact that these pants have jailbroken about half a dozen items in my wardrobe. After a year and a half of ownership, I can finally wear my vintage 1940s utility shoes!

These shoes are more than 60 years old and still going strong. They may not be dainty or elegant, but they were certainly built to last. Here’s the maker’s mark, complete with the CC41 “cheeses” to indicate that the shoes comply with British utility standards:

Like Tabby, the original owner was smart enough to have a cobbler attach protective half-soles and heels to extend the life of the the shoes themselves:

But back to my pants!

This is the most practical piece of clothing I’ve ever made, and definitely the first I’ve made with the presumption that I’d be wearing it regularly in situations requiring me to look normal and presentable. Ooh, pressure. But it is a challenge in its own way to make something that has to stand up against our RTW-trained aesthetic standards for street and workwear. I can see the appeal. Maybe Self-Stitched September isn’t out of the question after all!

I think I’m starting to understand the Simplicity problem (wacky drafting aside). As its name implies, Simplicity marketed itself in the 1940s and 1950s as the easiest and most accessible pattern company for novice seamstresses — its promotional film Pattern for Smartness, which I’ve featured before, emphasizes how easy Simplicity patterns are to use because the brainiacs at the company have done everything for you.

However, simplifying design and construction that much must involve sacrificing some quality in the finished product. Beautiful garments require finesse on the part of the maker — more finesse than can possibly be included on a single instruction sheet without printing it on monster A0-size paper. Therefore, a lot of vintage Simplicity patterns, because they favor easy-to-explain or apparently easy-to-master techniques, make it easy to sew a finished garment that looks homemade.

However, some of these “simplified” techniques actually involve false economies of effort. It’s easier to illustrate and explain how to make a “simple” straight waistband than a faced contour waistband, but I loathe and dread straight waistbands because they are never simple. The necessity of easing the garment into the waistband, for instance, often isn’t mentioned. You need to account for turn of cloth because it is physically impossible for three layers of fabric cut to the same length (waistband right and wrong sides + interfacing) to curve neatly around the waist without buckling or bulging. The traditional methods given for finishing the waistband (fold both seam allowances under and topstitch or handstitch to secure them) nearly always create too much bulk. And it is often fiendishly difficult to topstitch through multiple layers of fabric without creep, even using a walking foot. And on and on. I’m not sure this deceptive simplicity in patterns is helpful to those just learning to sew.

Anyway, despite the fact that I’m learning to understand Simplicity instead of just, you know, hating it, this will be my last. I really mean it this time!

Lessons learned:

• Apply a twill tape waistband for fitting. Any garment that hangs from the waist needs a stable waistband for accurate fitting. Sandra Betzina’s tip in Power Sewing about using twill tape for this is invaluable — I used a marker to draw the waistband “notches” on the twill tape and basted it just inside the seamline before trying on. This also gave me a better idea how much easing I’d have to do when applying the waistband to the garment (in this case, none).
• A method that looks simple on the instruction sheet may conceal hours of struggle. In this case, “topstitch waistband through all layers”.
• Avoid the Colombo Effect by resisting the temptation to tweak “just one more thing”. In my quest for the rare and novel sensation of snugly fitting trousers, I made one last impulsive fitting adjustment that nearly ruined the whole project. I took too much off the hips, distorting the fit and causing seam slippage, and had to let it out again. In the end it left permanent and visible flaws in the project. Ouch! Leave it alone!
• Use the best interfacing you can find. This may mean importing. You can have any interfacing you want in Britain as long as it’s Vilene (made with real paper!), which means I often come up empty-handed when searching for suitable interfacing for projects. So I didn’t have anything in my stash for interfacing the button and buttonhole plackets on these trousers (not mentioned in the instructions, by the way) and my buttonholes are already distorted. Waaah.
• Hemline brand anorak snaps are total crap. I had three people working on the problem and none of us could get the male half of the snaps to stay in the fabric. Avoid avoid avoid. In the end I used jeans buttons.

Coupons spent: 6 (2 less than a pair of store-bought pants!)

Coupons left: 41

Many women expected to wear different dresses for different times of day… [One woman] married and moved to Guernsey, where she kept to the style she had been accustomed to in the prosperous town of Guildford:

“For breakfast she had a pretty flowered dressing-gown. At ten she put on a simple business-like tailor-made costume for shopping in Peterport. On returning she changed into a workaday dress and an overall for kitchen operations. The overall was removed for lunch, and then, for the afternoon, a really good dress was put on for paying calls. When we came back a little exhausted from the strain of looking well and being polite, a loose tea-gown was the thing, and this remained on until it was time to dress for dinner.”

Seven different outfits of clothes for an ordinary day.

The book goes on to discuss how common this kind of dressing, minutely differentiated by function, actually was (not unheard-of, but by no means universal). She concludes that it was mostly for those with aspirations to fashionable life and that, even among the more affluent classes, a wardrobe of five dresses or so could be made to serve all occasions.

Those ladies didn’t have the endless mix-and-match permutations of the modern wardrobe of separates to contend with. But then, nor did they have to lug their own groceries home, stir-fry dinner, sprint for buses, cycle to work, interpret “business casual” or run marathons. Modern women’s lives contain such a variety of activities and personae that it’s hardly surprising that our wardrobes have expanded accordingly.

Your capsule wardrobe is inadequate.

Due to Fashion on the Ration, I’ve been a little overwhelmed lately by the strategy involved in making/buying the minimum amount of clothing to liberate the maximum possible number of viable outfit combinations. (FWIW, I also suck at chess.) But I’ve been heartened by how many participants in Zoe‘s brainchild Me-Made-May have said that the challenge has opened their eyes to how few garments they actually need.

I also found this article on capsule wardrobes at YouLookFab to be enlightening. Instead of aiming for the One Wardrobe To Rule Them All (where you turn up to all occasions in a trench and LBD) the author uses the concept of multiple wardrobe capsules to help you break down “what to wear” into a series of manageable, function-focused chunks tailored to your lifestyle. Seems obvious, but I found it useful.

As with nearly all other advice on what clothes to put on, Step 1 is appraising your current situation (weight, measurements, age, budget, lifestyle) truthfully. This has been a major stumbling block for me, as for many others. Until recently, my wardrobe would have allowed me to spend a week going to the opera, masked balls, dark and musky clubs and historical re-enactments with relative ease, but I struggled every morning to find something to wear to work. It’s an interesting comment on the differences between how I see (or would like to see) myself and my life and the reality.

*Wardrobe may not actually lead to Narnia.

Fantasy Wardrobe Susannah:

• Still lives in a climate with four well-defined seasons and no sudden, drastic temperature changes.
• Doesn’t have to do a lot of walking.
• Still spends quantities of time sipping cocktails in glitzy bars or getting down and sweaty on the dance floor.
• Only goes to work occasionally, mainly to show off sexy-librarian outfits.
• Possesses a time machine, rendering Victorian, Viking and Regency clothing practical everyday wear.

I’m all for dressing the princess inside, and this is a big part of what I love about the vintage/historical sewing community, but I do need something to wear to the office, you know?

Chaotic wardrobe tendencies are further complicated by the way clothing and accessory retailers (in London, at least) encourage “magpie shopping” by favoring statement pieces spangled with gewgaws over stylish, mixable essentials. Hunt for an elegant black turtleneck, a classy pencil skirt or a sleek, simple pair of strappy sandals and you may hunt in vain. It’s entirely possible here to have a bulging wardrobe and no actual outfits.

Do you suffer from fantasy wardrobe syndrome, buying or making clothes that don’t tie in to your actual lifestyle at all? Are you now or have you ever been a magpie shopper? How is it possible to change these habits?

Some stats:

• I own 11 dresses, only 2 of which are wearable more than once a year. (The rest are too whimsical, too costumey or too glitzy for everyday.)
• I don’t own a single short-sleeved top bought after 2006. I mostly live in a collection of Threadless tees I inherited off Freecycle.
• I own 1 (barely) presentable cardigan.
• Of my 15 pairs of shoes, I avoid wearing 7 pairs because they hurt my feet too much. The 3 which hardly hurt my feet at all are nearly destroyed because I have worn them into the ground.
• About 75% of my wardrobe fails the Team W0w test (“Could I wear this without shame to after-work drinks in one of the trendy bars my gang of friends patronize?”).
• About 60% of my wardrobe is officially crud, meaning I didn’t like it when I bought it and outright hate it now.
• About 90% of my sleepwear/loungewear is so grotty I feel like apologizing to my boyfriend.
• Cheap sweaters are always a waste of money.

My terror at the moment is being sucked into the London Style Vortex, where you stop doing things like flossing and exfoliating and just wear Uggs and black tights on all occasions. Looking at my wardrobe, I feel like I’ve been arrested on the very brink.

My wardrobe needs a transfusion, but coupons and funds are limited. So my plan of action involves:

• Sewing only street-wearable vintage and modern garments, preferably from my stash.
• Thrifting as much as possible to get clothing and fabrics coupon-free.
• Redyeing, revamping and refashioning where possible to bring old (or other people’s) clothing up to date.
• Buying only clothing and shoes I absolutely love and that work with my existing wardrobe and actual (not fantasy) lifestyle.
• Leveraging the power of accessories.
• Hinting pointedly to James about the perennial acceptability of gifts of awesome loungewear.

I am still plugging away at the Bestway dress! At least it’s reasonably wearable. Meanwhile, can anyone recommend a good pattern (or pattern source) for knit/jersey tops?

Little did I know that working women had the same problem back in 1949, when the phrase “sexual harassment” was not so much as a glint in Merriam-Webster’s eye. Their solution was a lot more becoming than the bookstore burqa. It was called the blixie — an all-in-one blouse/camiknicker set!