Autumn wardrobe planning

Last Saturday was the annual Sew Brum event in Birmingham and I set off bright and early to get there.  The meet up started at John Lewis and then moved on to the rag market and fabric shops in Birmingham city centre.  After that there was a short bus ride to Guthrie & Ghani in Moseley where the first floor sewing room was set up with tables for the fabric and pattern swap, a table displaying all the raffle prizes and a very welcome section with tea and cake!

I completely failed to take any photos all day, but I was inspired by Guthrie & Ghani's window display (there are pictures on their Instagram account and their window displays are always lovely) and when I got home I decided to have a bit of a wardrobe sort out to see what I had in the gorgeous autumnal colour palette they had used.

Everything

I was pleased to find that actually I could do quite a bit of mixing and matching and come up with several outfits.  (Although both pairs of trousers need shortening before I can wear them - I must get on and do that.)  I don't normally have everything together like this - the knitwear and tops I keep in a chest of drawers so it was helpful to see it all in one place.

Jackets and tops

Knitwear

Skirts, trousers and dresses

After I'd done the wardrobe review I got out all my autumnal fabrics - more than I'm going to sew up this year that's for sure, and some will also work in winter and spring as well, but it did bring home to me that I really do need to continue only sewing from stash (although the bee-print corduroy I did buy this year... shhh).  I'd had a good sort out of fabric stash before going up to Birmingham and took quite a bit for the swap table and I'm very pleased my resolve to not bring any fabric home with me didn't desert me, even in the face of temptation.

While I was reviewing my autumn knits I sorted out some cardigans which I either don't wear at all, or hardly ever wear, and have added them to the charity clothes recyling bag - I only have finite space and I'd much rather pass things on for others to wear than have them languishing unworn for years in a chest of drawers.

So, these are for skirts

These are dress lengths

These are also for dresses except the mustard sweatshirt fabric which is for a Coco top and which I bought in Guthrie & Ghani during 2015's Sew Brum - eek!

Now I've done the wardrobe sort out with autumn colours, I think doing the same with the rest of my autumn / winter clothes will be a good idea.  There may be another blog post on this theme in a few days' / weeks' time...