Changing Your Clothes

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

Category Archives: Miscellaneous


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It’s My Birthday, and I’ll Write What I Want To!

Okay, so my last two posts may not be the blog equivalent of War and Peace, but they are, shall we say, for the long-distance readers among you. And I’m getting ready for another edition of Makeover Monday. So today, I promise to keep my thoughts short! Well, shorter.

Since it actually is my birthday today, I’ve been thinking about birthday wishes. A lot of people have been wishing me a happy birthday on Facebook, and, reading these messages, I suddenly wondered what a “happy birthday” is. When I said “Happy birthday!” to my twin sister on the phone a little while ago, what exactly was I wishing for her? Lots of presents and a fabulous cake? No, those are things, which can be happy-making, certainly, but don’t constitute happiness in themselves.

Maybe it’s having that one day that’s focused only on you? That’s probably getting a little closer; remember that feeling from your childhood, that excitement building up for at least a week before your birthday? I do. (And I grew up with seven brothers and sisters, so having that one day really counted.)

And yet, this week, when my daughter asked me what I’d like to do for my birthday, I automatically said, “Oh, you don’t have to do anything. It’s no big deal.” ??? Excuse me, self, but it is a very big deal that you were born!

So, just for today, my happy birthday will be all about me: what I want to do (drive out to the ocean, a favorite winter activity), what I want to eat (a fabulous French menu, cooked by me except for the clafoutis, which Valerie has volunteered to make), and what I want to write! And now, since I’m about to head to the beach, I’ll leave you with one last deeply philosophical thought:

Great. Now I have that song stuck in my head.


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Mix It Up 2: Oddball Outfits

I admit it: I’ve held on to certain garments for years a while now, long enough to know they’re well past their fashion expiration date, but somehow I’m unable to just let them go. (Hello, Lindy? This is the 1980s calling. We’d really like our leather jacket back. Yes, the shoulder pads too.) Don’t we all have at least one thing in our closet clinging doggedly to its hanger, way back in the darkest corner?

Refinery29 to the rescue: their latest slideshow will inspire you to shake the dust off those oddball items by mixing them with more modern pieces! I’m noticing in particular the creative use of accessories; in the example below (the oddball being the bridesmaid dress), sharpening up the soft color of the dress with the black jacket and clutch does wonders, along with the bright golden accents, and the little pop of red in the earrings.

Bridesmaid dress remix!

Bridesmaid dress remix! (Click on the picture to go directly to the slideshow.)

Continue reading →


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Practical vs. Extravagant: The Follow-up

I know you’ve all been breathlessly waiting to hear the results of my Practical vs. Extravagant question. Wait no longer! (For those of you who are breathlessly confused about what I’m talking about, you might want to read the post that started this great debate.) Here is my finished outfit:

Extravagant dance outfit!

My Extravagant outfit, all dressed up and hoping to dance! The skirt, with its glowing colors and asymmetrical hem (longer on the right side of this photo, shorter on the other side), is sexy without being inappropriate.

Continue reading →


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An Exceptional Resolution

New Year’s Day. Reviewing my closet this morning, I was wondering what resolutions to make, relative to changing my clothes; after all, what’s in my closet changes of its own volition, at least a little, almost constantly. Just in the past week or so, I’ve had to let go of a favorite pair of red suede T-strap shoes that I’ve had for at least 10 years, decided an equally ancient sweater was just not worth any more mending, and that a favorite sequinned tank top was (sigh) just too small. I wonder: with a wardrobe in more or less continual evolution, is it worth making resolutions today that may just have to be amended tomorrow? Continue reading →


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Special Favors

2012. What a year! Looking back now, I think primarily about 2 events in my life: The first was when my daughter very nearly died of a sudden, total liver failure (still inexplicable), and what has happened since that terrible time in early March. The second was the official start of my blogging life, at the very end of July.

These seem totally unrelated, don’t they? I suppose they are, in most ways, but here’s where they come together for me: I am most profoundly grateful for both experiences. Continue reading →


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Practical vs. Extravagant: The Great Debate

Last week, when I was trying to plan a special holiday outfit, toying with various pieces of fabrics and patterns, I found myself in a familiar place of indecision. I had put together a selection of more or less coordinated fabrics from my over-abundant stash: I started with a gorgeous sequinned fabric with cutouts and a fabulous pointy border, which I thought would be most appropriate for a skirt, but this would necessitate some sort of lining. I came up with a tie-dyed georgette which looked wonderful under the sequins, but which was semi-sheer, so I found a bright coral satin for the undermost layer of what was now a 3-layer skirt.

(Those of you with sharp eyes and memories may recognize this satin from my recent post about making a skirt from a custom-fitted muslin; the satin lines that skirt. Good thing I like this stuff— even after making this second skirt, I still have a lot left over!)

Finally, I added a coral stretch velvet to make a simple top (with all that going on in the skirt, the top really needs to be simple). Here are the four fabrics:

Fabrics for dancing outfit

Fabrics for my dancing outfit: The sequinned beauty with the tie-dyed georgette underneath and showing through the cutouts in the sequinned piece, and the satin underneath both (you can see a little of this by itself in the lower right corner). In the upper left corner is the stretch velvet.

Continue reading →


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Merry Christmas, everyone!

Here’s a little holiday cheer for all my CYC friends! (Talk about changing my clothes!)

Click on the link (or the screenshot) to watch this funny video, starring ME!

http://www.jibjab.com/view/L13Mdg6Fqp3wsyuMlKuI

Video screen shot

A screen shot from my Christmas video; click on the picture to go to the video!

 


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Fashion Catchphrases: A Video Vocabulary Lesson

Is your fashion vocabulary a little out of date? Confused by terms like “manthropology” and “fashion shower”? Brush up on the current jargon with this hilarious video, courtesy of Refinery29!

Fashion Catchphrases video from Refinery29

Fashion Catchphrases from Refinery29. (This is a screenshot from the video; click the picture to go directly to the video.)


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Warm Evenings 2: How I Dressed Up My Coat

After writing my last post about evening coats (Warm Evenings: Dress Up Your Coat!), I got to thinking: what is that makes a coat “evening”, anyway? Sure, there are the duchesse-satin numbers, the velvet wraps, even some occasional cape drama— but how many of us own any of these, or want to? Since I’m not on the socialite circuit, let alone on the red carpet (yet), where’s the use value? Even with all the financial doom-and-gloominess, we still want to buy new clothes— we just expect more versatility. As I suggested in the previous post, why can’t one coat work for everyday use, as well as for dressier occasions?

To get into that day-coat-for-evening concept a little more, I thought I’d let you in on my getting-ready-for-the-museum-party (mentioned in the previous post) thought process.

Step 1: Pick a dress. I narrowed my choices down to 3 possibilities: the favorite, the pinch-hitter, and the in-case-of-emergency. And here’s where I ran into my problem. As I was trying on my favorite (a 1950s fit-and-flare-silhouette dress that I made with pale aqua silk noil to which I added an overlay of dark brown metallic lace), I suddenly realized it’s November, this dress is sleeveless — I have to wear a coat. Or something of that ilk. Problem: I have no coat/wrap/cape that’s the right combination of color and look to work with this dress.

So I ended up wearing my pinch-hitter dress: a bias-cut print silk georgette, one of my favorites; I got this from Anthropologie over 6 years ago, and I love it just as much now, but it’s quite definitely a summer dress. (Anthropologie called it the “Surrealist Dress”, which made it seem all the more appropriate for a night at the museum.) Here it is:

Surrealist Dress Surrealist Dress from Anthropologie; not exactly cold-weather wear! Continue reading →


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Warm Evenings: Dress Up Your Coat!

Last night, I was trying to decide what to wear to the Portland Art Museum’s member party. Since this was the first time I’ve gone to an event like this in Portland, I wasn’t sure exactly what would constitute an appropriate ensemble; all I knew was that it was in the evening, there would be food, wine, live music, and dancing. A dress seemed indicated. However…

You know how sometimes you base an entire outfit around a fabulous pair of shoes? Well, as I was trying to get ready, it dawned on me that I might just have to choose my dress to go with a coat, instead of the other way around. To the coat closet I went, only to discover that anything that could remotely be construed as “evening” was not going to work with any of my dresses. (In my defense, I have been uncharacteristically ruthless with my recent closet purges, and it was warm and dry for so long this year that this issue really hadn’t come up.)

What kinds of coats actually do work for evening? I suspect most of us don’t really want to invest in coats we’ll only wear occasionally, so is it possible to find coats that work for day as well as for dressier events? If so, where can we find these happy hybrids? Continue reading →