I’ve been doing some thinking.

I feel as if I am a “SQUIRREL!” maker. I generally purchase yarn that fits my mood at the moment. I generally make patterns that are new and shiny or just fit a skein of yarn I want to use. I feel myself going that direction with sewing garments, as well.

Recently, I’ve been very inspired by several makers. Maria at Stitched in Sweden has a cohesive style, and the things she makes always seem to fit that vision. Jennie, tinypaperfoxes on Instagram, is working on a project to have a handmade wardrobe in 4 years and she’s another person whose makes just seem to shout that she made them. Now that I’m moving into some garment making, I’ve been thinking a lot about that sense of a cohesive style, especially as it relates to my making. I certainly don’t think I have a style beyond the fact that I wear black pants to work everyday, so I took to the internet.

Enter the Wardrobe Architect series on the Colette Blog. It’s a series of blog posts with activities designed to help you define, guess what? Your own core style! I’ve gone through the whole process, and boy! was it ever eye opening. I found it fun and inspirational.

After a fair bit of thought and reflection on things like your history, body image, and style icons, you’re asked to list words that you associate with your answers to the questions and reflections. I really like word association type activities, I think it helps crystallize your thoughts. After you create that big list, you are asked to condense it down into 3-5 words to describe yourself and your core style. Mine are:

Feminine, cozy, simple, classic

Armed with those words, the next step is to create a visual inspiration board to represent those words.

It makes me happy just to look at these images, and my entire inspiration board on Pinterest. These first steps in learning and crafting my own core style gave me a great deal of inspiration for the next steps. Tomorrow, we’ll explore a little about silhouettes.

Happy making!