Creative Challenge: inspiration

The past few weeks I've been collecting pictures on Pinterest of girls' clothing I love, but can't afford. You can see the board here, but I will also be posting many of the inspiration pieces in a future blog post.

Here is my current workroom - my bed with everything laid out.

Since I am a beginning sewer, I picked very very easy patterns. A-line dresses, gathered skirts, elastic waists and necklines, and simple straight lines. I'll talk about how my patterns reflect my inspirations later as well.

 I had a couple of fabrics on-hand that started my ideas (that bright fuchsia stripe that you see was one of those). I had some navy crepe fabric as well as some leftover corduroy. I had a web coupon for fabric.com and bought a few key fun prints for 50% off (the grey and yellow flower print as well as the chiffon b&w leopard).

 I'm going to try some unusual fabrics and see how they play out - like that navy and white ticking fabric you see next to the greys. And a cotton/linen brown blend you see right next to the pink stripe. Joanns will cut swatches for you (up to a limit of 4) so I'm going back about once a week to get swatches and see how they play out in the collection. I'm going back for a checked gingham and solid pink next.

 I can't believe how much fun this personal creative challenge has been for me.