Top Ten Things For Your Wardrobe

It doesn’t matter if you read news sites, fashion (or non-fashion) blogs, but I think at least once a week, I see a headline which reads: “The Top Ten… that you must have in your closet this season” (or, next season, or this year, or..).

And it doesn’t matter what it is or what they are touting but I have to tell you when Aunt Toby goes down through those lists of items, invariably, the little voice in her head is saying, “Nope…nope…are they kidding?… nope, that’s another useless item…only on women under the age of 30 who are over 5’8” tall… I’d break my ankles if I wore those…even if I liked that I wouldn’t be able to find it or find it in MY size… nope …and where did she get those clavicles?”

I think this sort of stuff makes for a lot of stress and bother. I also think it feeds into the whole ‘shop ‘til you drop’ and ‘got to do my part for the economy even if it means buying trashy crap made by 12 year olds chained to sewing machines in a foreign country’ thinking. I don’t have a lot of room my closet and I’d rather have things that:

a) Fit me, which is not a slam dunk since I am short, dumpy, and have arms like a T-rex.
b) I’d reach for a lot – I like to get a lot of wear out of stuff. I feel more than slightly guilty when I get something and only wear it once, like the absolutely amazing dress I lost 60 pounds to wear at a friend’s wedding. I got to wear that dress exactly ONCE – the most expensive garment I ever bought. I lent it out to a friend a number of times – she looked fab in it but now it’s totally out of fashion (essence of Princess Di) and still takes up space in my closet as a reminder of what not to do.
c) Will go with the other stuff in my wardrobe. Many times, I have thought, “You know, you really should break out and wear other colors…” but I like separates and I like putting things together, so introducing a whole new color palette is sort of like ripping up everything in the kitchen. And every time I have followed that voice telling me to go out there and buy something new, the poor thing has shivered there in a corner with me dragging it out and wearing it with black slacks or something. Very creative, that.
d) Will take care of those occasions when I start to panic about having something or somethings that I can put together which will look smart, not too costume-y, and are not a ‘can only wear once’ sort of thing.

So, my sewing plan this year is to look at the closet and ask myself, “What are the things that I’m always asking myself, “Why don’t I have xxx and what are my chances of ever finding it in the stores?” Then, I’ll make them. And here is numero uno for the closet: A bolero.

Now, I’m sure a number of you are asking yourselves, “Who on earth needs a bolero?”

And Aunt Toby’s answer is this – every woman who wears dresses or tops in the summer which have no sleeves or even no straps needs a bolero. Actually if you wear sun dresses, you need a couple, one of which should be white. IMHO, a white (pique, preferably but any crisp white fabric will do the trick) bolero is sort of the Little Black Dress for summer – you can wear it with any other color; it spiffs up the outfit immeasurably, and it covers up some parts of you that as far as UV rays are concerned should DEFINITELY be covered up. Also, if you end up someplace where the A/C is a bit too aggressive, a bolero is a god-send. However, in this case, my immediate need is not for a white bolero; it is for a dressier evening thing to wear over the dress I am wearing to the local ‘Big Cheese Dinner/Boring Speech/ and After Dinner Dance”. I did not have time to make myself a dress this year, and in rummaging around in one of the closets, found a lovely burgundy dress once worn by one of my daughters. The only downside for moi is that it has teeny tiny straps, which always make me feel horribly exposed. I’m not a shawl wearer and the little black lacy cardi would not really make it with this dress, so I decided to use a bit of some black net with sequins fabric that I got a while ago from Fabricmart Fabrics.

On it’s own, it’s rather floppy, and this pattern shows a rather crisp result, so I got some black organza to back it up. Also, once you get into the sheer area of sewing, your options for seams hover in the French seam area, which I didn’t want to do. So, I cut out the pieces of organza and sequined sheer, sewed them up together as if the organza was an interlining, trimmed the seams and zigzagged the edges, sewed those down and then trimmed all the outside edges with my favorite technique, which is bias binding, using black satin.

One of the annoyances of this technique is that the fabric strip, on the bias, usually is NOT of a length where you’ll only have one join at the start and my luck is usually that I end up with having to make a bias join someplace in the front, which is awkward and unattractive. So, this time, what I did (and this worked really well since the spot where the neck meets the front is supposed to have those perky square edges) was to bias bind the neck edge in one piece of bias binding and then use a separate piece of bias binding for the edge going down from the neck, around the curved edge to the back then back up the curved edge up to the neck again. As I suspected, I did not even have a piece of bias long enough for that, but I was able to piece them in such a way as to put the seam at the very back center, so that was a rather neat and tidy solution to the problem. As you can see, I also bias bound the armhole edges as well.

Now, bolero’s have had their ‘moment’ a couple of times in the past 70 years. They were very popular in the 1940s. This pattern is from 1951. They also can be found in vintage pattern collections from the 1980s and early 90s as well. I just did a quick and dirty search on the ‘Big Four’ pattern companies and they all have at least one bolero pattern, so finding something you like should be fairly easy.

So, now I’m all set for the evening but I also plan to make a couple of other boleros to get me through the summer.