Four fabric boxes created to store seasonal dress for Summer, autumn Winter and Spring.
I have been sewing so many clothes (particularly dresses) that my wardrobe is now bursting at the seams! I have also been following Jennifer L. Scott’s website ‘the Daily Connoisseur’ for a long time and she was the first person I noticed using a successful capsule wardrobe system https://dailyconnoisseur.blogspot.com/2021/08/fall-wardrobe-planning-ten-item-capsule.html . Jennifer has a ten-item wardrobe that she changes with the season. She keeps everything she loves and only updates as necessary. The ten items are core garments and don’t include accessories or additional layers, such as jerseys to go over dresses or t shirts. I have been half hearted about this idea because I like adding colour and change to my wardrobe, but I’ve been wondering if refreshing my wardrobe every three months with my existing me-made dresses would give me the injection of freshness I crave.
Jennifer stores her off season items in beautiful French ticking fabric boxes https://www.youtube.com/user/TheDailyConnoisseur . I have been looking around for some similar boxes but haven’t been able to see anything I like so decided to buy some suitable fabric after looking at an excellent Debbie Shore tutorial on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IBAEljW-wE . Several other YouTube tutorials listed the importance of iron on stabiliser, heavy-duty spray glue and even plastic supports so I supposed I needed to purchase these as well…, and then another full level four New Zealand lockdown hit!
Instead of buying specialty materials I went into my stash and found two different denim canvas fabrics, a roll of quilt wadding, and some mysterious black fabric that would make perfect lining. I also found the remnants of a roll of old-school stitch on interfacing to stiffen the lining.
I measured the space I had to store the boxes at the top of my wardrobe and decided a 30cm square box would work. I created a 30cm square template out of brown packaging paper and then remembered to add seam allowances. I used this template to cut out 20 denim squares (five for each box), 20 wadding squares, 20 black fabric squares and then 20 interfacing squares.
I drew lines from corner to corner on the denim canvas and then quilted the layers together because I did not have any fancy spray glue or iron-on quilt batting. The quilted squares were then stitched together to create the cube. Debbie Shore shows exactly how this is done. I repeated the process with the interfaced black fabric. I then put the lining top and the box top right sides together and stitched them around the top edge leaving an opening to turn the lining to the inside.
The box was still a bit soft, and the sides were a bit floppy, so I reinforced each seam with another row of top stitching creating an additional spine on the vertical edges and around the base. This helped the box stay in shape. I needed to take this step slowly though, I broke two needles when I tried to hurry this process.
I finished the boxes with labels on my Cricut Maker to indicate Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring. They instantly made my wardrobe look more efficient and organised. Now I just need to see if the system works for me.
Sew.Irons 