Changing Your Clothes

Shopping, Sewing, Upcycling, Repairing: Make the most of your clothes!

Category Archives: Color Palettes

Ideas for creating and using custom color palettes, in your wardrobe, home, and more!


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Packing ORDer (and a minor emergency)

You’ve heard my original plan for my Chicago (ORD) wardrobe, seen the color palette I developed for it, and how that palette translates into fabrics, as well as clothes and accessories already in my closet. And now, on my last day of preparation, I can at least show you what I’ve been working on for the past 6 planning-and-sewing-filled days. (This will be in the nature of a briefing— emphasis on brief— with many more details to follow after I get home.)

After working out this color palette, my next move was to decide which garments to make with which fabrics.

My new ORDer palette

My new ORDer palette. Click on the palette to see it on my ColourLovers page.

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ORDering Color from your Closet

This week on Makeover Monday, I showed you how I started with my turquoise necklace, then added various fabrics to it to build a color palette for my ORD (Chicago) trip coming up next week. Now I want to quickly follow up by showing how you can do the same thing (whether you sew or not), simply by pulling things out of your closet.

Once again, here’s my new palette:

My new ORDer palette

My new ORDer palette. (I created this palette at ColourLovers.com; click the palette to see it there!)

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Makeover Monday: A New Wardrobe ORDer

Last week, after discovering that I would be heading to Chicago for 8 days, I told you about my initial travel-wardrobe thought process. (This boiled down to the types of pieces I thought I’d need, taking lodging, events, and weather into account.) Since I will be leaving in about a week, my priority now is to create a color palette, so that’s what I’ll focus on today.

Aside: In case my punny use of ORD is causing a raised eyebrow or two, let me explain: ORD is the airport identifier for Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. It will probably happen again. End of aside.

Changing Your Clothes is primarily about making the most out of what we already have, so that’s what I’ll do first: make over my Santa Fe Wardrobe from last fall. To my closet!

Oh. A funny thing happened on the way to my closet… I got distracted by this piece of fabric, bought just 2 days before I found out about this upcoming trip:

Cotton print fabric

Cotton print fabric. This is a medium-weight cotton with a bit of stretch, but it was the print I couldn’t pass up! (I’m extremely picky about prints.) It’s destined for a vintage-inspired dress.

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In Transition: A Postscript

After my last two posts (In Transition and In Transition Encore), I just wanted to add a few words on why I’m exploring this topic. I mean, it’s enough work to come up with seasonal wardrobes in the first place— now we have to mix them together?!

Every year I have the same struggle with getting my summer wardrobe together: why should I invest a lot of money, time, and effort into hot-weather clothes that in all likelihood will only be worn for a few weeks out of the year? (This applies to clothes that are bought, as well as ones that I make myself.) Well, as I’ve been finding out this year, the key is in planning. If I put more of the up-front effort into strategic planning, it should not only save shopping time, but also the time I might otherwise spend later in either returning items that don’t work, or in taking them to the thrift store. Not to mention whatever it takes to replace those rejected pieces! Continue reading →


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Santa Fe Wardrobe: A Post-Trip Review

Now that I’m back from Santa Fe, I realize that I need to follow up on my previous posts about creating my travel wardrobe for this trip. (See the following if you want to catch up: Santa Fe Travel Wardrobe: Color Palette, and The Fabrics & Projects. I also posted ideas for shopping for this wardrobe: Shopping! and Shopping 2: $49.95 or Less! Meanwhile, I’ll get all these photos ready to show you.)

Honestly, I’m a bit surprised that my actual travel wardrobe turned out almost exactly as I planned it; I’ll give more details about the changes as we go. First, here are photos of the pieces I packed: tops, bottoms, dress.

The Tops The tops; it’s unusual for me to wear prints at all, so you can see I’m trying to push myself! (I made the one-shouldered silk tunic and the sage and lavender cap-sleeve knit top.) Continue reading →


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Spooling Colors: A Spontaneous Palette

I was working on a sewing project the other day, and was changing thread colors on my sewing machine. Without really looking at what I was doing, I set down the sage-green spools I’d been using (laying them behind the machine so they wouldn’t roll off the slightly sloping table). Something back there caught my eye, and I suddenly noticed that I had put the green spools down on top of a zip-top bag with a couple of spools inside it. This is exactly what I saw:

Thread palette

I just love the way these colors look together, but how do you translate that into an actual palette? Go to ColourLovers! (The link will take you to my page on ColourLovers, but feel free to browse the whole site. It’s worth the trip, I promise.) Using this photo as my starting point, I created this palette:

Threads palette on ColourLovers
Threads palette created on ColourLovers; note the addition of the white (from the spools) and charcoal grey (from the background of the photo).

When you’re looking at a photo like the one with the threads, the subject matter of the photo can be distracting; it’s often easier to visualize using a color palette when you can see it in solid, flat colors as in the ColourLovers palette.

Why don’t you try creating your own custom palette with a photo? Even photos that are not that great (out of focus, etc.) can be rich sources of beautiful color palettes. You can do this online at ColourLovers, and/or use their palette-creation software, ColorSchemer Studio (they even have a smartphone app version of this!). Have fun! And be sure to post your palettes here for us all to enjoy!


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Food Coloring: Just Beet It!

All right, maybe I’m taking this color obsession a little too far… Yesterday, when I was visiting my sister up in Poulsbo, Washington, we were enjoying a wonderful home-cooked lunch at her house that included many young, delicious vegetables from her garden (and a chicken). This locovore’s delight included a dish of beautiful beets, regular (or whatever the red ones are called) and golden, together on a platter, thus:

Beets Beets, part of a delicious lunch at my sister’s house. Little did she know… Continue reading →


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Changing Your Closet: What System Works?

Closet confession #1 (yes, there will be more): I reorganize my clothes regularly, partly to remove the things that no longer work for me, but mostly in an attempt to find the perfect system. Care to make a guess as to my success rate?

The way I’ve generally organized my closet in the past has been by type, i.e. skirts together, dresses together, etc. Here’s how my wardrobe (at least the parts that hang) looked using this plan:

My Closet, Organized by Item Type

My clothes (the hanging ones), grouped according to item type.

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Santa Fe Wardrobe, Shopping 2: $49.95 or less!

You know, when I was working on the original Santa Fe shopping wardrobe in Polyvore for yesterday’s post (Santa Fe Wardrobe: Shopping!), I must admit that I didn’t even look at the prices of any of the items, with the inevitable result that some things were crazy-pricey, while others were amazing bargains. While it is certainly a whole lot of fun to “shop” with no regard for budget, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to see what I could do if I only used items that cost $50.00 or less, including accessories, which can be difficult to find with that price restriction (at least if you want decent quality). I’m surprised at all the great options I found in a fairly quick search!

(By the way, for any of you who may not be familiar with Polyvore, it’s a super-fun place where you can shop, follow other users whose style you admire, get inspired, and create your own collections! There’s also a widget to put in your browser toolbar that lets you copy anything you run across online to your place on Polyvore, to add to your own sets and collections. Try it!) Continue reading →


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Santa Fe Wardrobe: Shopping!

As promised: Santa Fe Wardrobe, the shopping edition!

I like to start by “shopping my closet”. I know, I know, it’s much more fun to go out and get new stuff, but hey, it can also be rewarding to unearth something you haven’t worn in (she said with a blush) over 2 years, and find that it works perfectly with your travel wardrobe color palette! So into the closet I go, and find all these pieces that fit not only the color palette but my actual clothing needs for my trip to Santa Fe:

Lightweight Silk/Mohair Sweater Lightweight Silk/Mohair Sweater (hand-knitted by yours truly) Continue reading →