The deadline for #thegreatmodulesewalong is today, so I managed to scrape in by the skin of my teeth. I haven’t been getting a ton of sewing done since the Coronavirus stepped up and changed our daily routine (in fact, my sewjo has been slow all year to be fair), but I was determined to finish this if I could, so put in a good few hours at the weekend and managed to succeed without cutting any corners. I wrote about my plans and the challenge background here back in February if you’re interested or haven’t heard about it, but, otherwise, here are the clothes!

The Clothes

Very briefly, the challenge involved picking a topper, three tops and two bottoms and I decided to base my collection around a spring coat I already had planned, which was Coat Q from the Atelier to Nani Iro book I mentioned in the last post, and last in the grid below.

The other items were (from top left):

1. High-waisted Dawn jeans by Megan Nielsen with the tapered leg and regular length option. I LOVE these. It’s taken me a while to make a “proper” pair of high-waisters, but of course now I see what all the fuss is about. I just didn’t think they would work for me. I’ll post a dedicated post in a week or two as I want to give them a chance to break in a little and see how they go.
2. The Recital Shirt by Liesl + Co. This is such a cool shirt and I love the light Japanese lawn I used for it. So comfortable. I wrote a fitting post for Liesl’s blog while making this, so I’ll post something on my own blog linking to it once it’s up (beginning of April I believe)

3. The Sadie sweater by Seamwork in a lovely Lillestoff knit jacquard. I made this a few weeks ago and posted about the adaptions I made to the pattern to get it the way I liked it. I’ve worn it a TON since then and will probably make loads more. A perfect spring sweater.

4. A cropped Victory tank by Chalk and Notch in Ellen Barker double gauze by Kokka. I really like Ellen Barker, so I was excited I could squeeze this top out of 1m. I also made the longer version in a rayon challis and wrote about them both in my most recent post.

5. A pair of Robinson trousers by Ensemble Patterns in a wine stretch twill. This was the first item I made for the module and, while they need a little tweaking for next time, I’ve worn them a lot and like the pattern.

6. The aforementioned Coat Q from the Atelier to Nani Iro book. This was such a fast and pleasurable sew, with only one little tricky part. I made this in one day! I’ll also post about this separately soon.

Mix n Match

My poor suffering husband, God love him, was not super excited when I informed him that he was lucky enough to have the opportunity to take photos of not one new garment, but a whole six of them in different combinations and permutations.

Obviously, the idea of the capsule wardrobe is that you can wear everything with everything else. As far as colours went, I decided on a mix of black, white and grey to match up with the Coat Q colour scheme, with an additional splash of wine/burgundy to keep things interesting.

I also wanted to use a mix of interesting prints and textures as I like a contrasting style and also have a ton of prints I wanted to use! My general idea was that since Coat Q is a very unstructured, duster-like outerwear piece, I would make sure the other pieces were generally a little more structured, for some contrast. The Victory tank has those lovely geometric straps, for instance, which add clean lines to the ensemble.

The Recital shirt has a very high, frilly collar which is almost Victorian or Elizabethan in execution and I very much had that in mind when pairing the pattern with this fabric. My chin is probably a bit too, well… much, these days for such a high collar (maybe one day I’ll regain my once-slim neck) but I love it anyway, so whatever.

As far as the bottoms went, I really, really needed trousers/pants and in particular some solid-coloured ones that would go with plenty of other items in my wardrobe. The wine Robinson pants were the low-maintenance choice, with an elasticated waist, but also some cool closures at the bottom of the leg to add a bit of zing – in this case zippers and studs.

And the Dawn jeans were my surprise hit of the wardrobe, as I mentioned at the beginning of the post. I have lots more detail to give on these, but they are going to be so versatile in my entire wardrobe. I really want to make some more now!

So would I do it again? Darn right I would! I do love a challenge, me, but this was more fun than even I was expecting. I don’t know if it’s because I picked garments with enough variety or whether it’s a function of the module itself, but I really enjoyed this process. Six is a good number of garments to sew without losing your mind (plus you could use already-sewn ones if you wanted) and the pyramid-type garment selection is clever.

I also learnt a lot. I picked garments that I ended up doing a bit of fitting on and it really got me to the next level in understanding the geometry of some parts of my body. I also learnt some new techniques like putting in my first sleeve placket (more straightforward than I anticipated) and sewing a rollover collar.

To be honest, I’m tempted to do a loungewear one next (I mean, we’re all inside anyway, right?) as I’m sorely in need of some “nice” lounging gear and I have the fabric in stash to do it. Plus it would be pretty quick I think. Did you take part in this and what did you think? Have I persuaded you to give it a go if you were dubious? Let me know – I’d love to hear. Also, I’d recommend checking out the hashtag #thegreatmodulesewalong on Instagram if you have a chance. There are some really inspirational wardrobe ideas on there from other sewists!