Style Workshop Part 3: Examine

Show Notes

• 
  Style Camp Part 1: In this episode, Sarai and Haley introduce you to the new Style Workshop.


• 
  Style Camp Part 2: In this episode, you investigate your identity through your history, culture, values, and body.


• 
  Click here to download the Sewing Camp Toolkit. It includes our sewing spaces freebie, exercises to help you upgrade your space, and a preview of our Style Workshop.


• 
  The new Style Workshop is here! It’s free for Seamwork members or just $10 without a membership.


• 
  Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 1: Explore. The first episode of Space Camp.


• 
  Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 2: Strategize. The second episode of Space Camp


• 
  Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 3: Audit. The third episode of Space Camp.


• 
  Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 4: Organize. The final episode of Space Camp.


• 
  Podcast listeners get half off an unlimited Seamwork membership when you use this link, plus you get to keep that price as long as you’re a member!


• Tell us your idea for the next icebreakers for makers!

Podcast Transcript

Sarai
I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.

Sarai
Welcome back to Seamwork Radio, where we share practical ideas for building a creative process so you can sew with intention and joy.

And welcome to the second half of Seamwork Radio Summer Sewing Camp 2023. So, over the next two weeks, so got four weeks altogether of this part, and the next two weeks are the final part. We're going to be embarking on a journey together to examine our personal style.

So if you missed the first two episodes in this, you can go back and give them a listen. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about the second tool in the Style Workshop, which is called Examine.

And we're going to be examining what we have in our wardrobes already and how we feel about it in order to develop our personal style. So if that sounds like fun to you or you just want to learn some great ideas for honing your own personal style, then definitely stay tuned for this episode.

So we've mentioned before that this is a pain point for people. Discovering your personal style can be a challenging and intimidating process for a lot of us. And that's why we developed our new class, the Style Workshop, which launches on July 12.

This is a 90 minute-style workshop to help you pinpoint your style so you can fully express yourself through the clothing you make. This is a 90 minute workshop that we've done live. We're going to continue to do it live every once in a while, but you can also get a recording of one of our live sessions from our website. If you are a Seamwork member, it's totally free, or you can purchase it if you're not a Seamwork member. And it's very, very affordable. It's only $10.

And as part of Seamwork Sewing Camp, during the month of July, we're going to be doing a condensed version of this class together. So you can get a few of the Style Workshop exercises by downloading the Seamwork Summer Camp toolkit. But be sure to check out the complete Style Workshop if you want to do the workshop alongside us, which is really, really fun.

So the first exercise we're going to talk about today is called The Staples. And in that exercise, you seek out the items in your closet that you wear the most often, and you examine those.

And then the next exercise we do in the Style Workshop is called Beloved. In that exercise, you go back to your closet and you find the clothes that you love to wear the most, and you ask yourself why. So you're kind of looking at it from two different dimensions: the things you wear the most and the things that you love.

Then the final exercise in this tool is called What I Value. And you take everything you've examined in the first two exercises, and you pull your values, like things like comfort or mobility or self expression, and you rate those. And we've got a nice little exercise for you to do around that in the Style Workshop. So those are the three exercises that we cover in Examine, and we're going to talk a little bit about that today.

Haley
So I feel like we just have like a really natural starting place, which is Sarai. Tell me about your staples. What are your staples?

Sarai
My staples? Oh, boy. I feel like this varies a lot depending on the season. I'm sure that's true for a lot of people. If you don't live somewhere like Southern California where it's beautiful year round, which is probably most of us, this varies a little bit, but I would say my staples. So in the Style Workshop, we have you we have a little area for you to write these down. So it's seven to ten items in your closet, something like that.

I would say for me, a pair of black pants that I wear all the time that are really comfortable and smart looking, and they go with everything is one. Jeans are another. Again, go with everything very sturdy, can be worn most places and last forever. So I really like that.

Overalls, I have like four pairs of overalls. I wear overalls a lot. They're very, very practical for gardening, for just about anything. You can wear almost anything with overalls, I find.

Haley
Yeah.

Sarai
So that's another one. A white sweater. I like that in the fall and the winter or the spring also, anytime when it's cool. I like it because it's very layerable and classic. And I really like to wear the color white generally.

Those are the things that come to mind first. I'd say a camel coat would be another one. I have one that was passed down to me for my grandmother. I absolutely love it. My puffer coat in the winter. I wear that all the time. Mostly because it's super, super warm. It's waterproof. I like to be warm. I don't like to get cold and wet. So that's another one that I wear an awful lot. And it's a nice cream color, goes with everything again. And it is very practical, but my rain boots also, same thing. Those are the things that staples.

Haley
You get to be practical.

Sarai
Yeah, that's what comes to mind for me. And these are mostly, most of these are like I mean, a couple of them are a little bit like dressier, like the black pants. But most of these are very much in the workwear or utilitarian category for me, which I think is really interesting. What about you? What would you consider your staples?

Haley
Well, jeans. I love denim. I feel like there's a lot of denim in my staples. I have a denim jacket. I have a denim shirt, which I'm currently wearing. A couple of pairs of jeans, probably even overalls. I have a couple of pairs of those in denim, couple linen. Rain jacket, because, yeah, that's just where we live. I have a navy wool coat that I wear a ton, button-up shirts. The things that are more, like, warmer weather, which we have a lot less of here in Oregon, is I have a handful of kind of floaty rayon dresses that I just love to wear, really easy to wear, throw-on pieces. I think those are, like, my staples, for sure.

Sarai
Yeah. I think it's really interesting because we both grew up in a warmer climate than we live in now. And I find I don't know if it's true for you, but I find that I have a lot more warm weather clothing than I need, because I like it. And that's, like, what I grew up wearing is shorts and dresses and summery things. I love it. I also love just throwing something on. It makes me like not having to construct a complicated outfit out of it.

Haley
I love an all-in-one situation. Yeah. We definitely was a shock when I moved here from Los Angeles, because I sewed for one season when I lived there. Like, I sew cute dresses, and then in the winter, I put a sweater over it and wear a jean jacket. That's what I wear. My wardrobe is a little imbalanced still. Nine years later.

Sarai
Yeah. So when I do this exercise, I really try to think about what I actually wear throughout the year, and not just right now. It's very easy to focus on right now. It's summer, so it's easy to focus on summer. So I think it's another thing to keep in mind if you go through the Style Workshop and do these exercises.

Haley
Yeah. Okay. So what about your beloved pieces?

Sarai
There is quite a bit of overlap, I would say. My jeans, my overalls. I love my overalls. They're so practical, and I do think they provide a lot of balance. Like, when you wear a pretty top with a pair of overalls, I really like that balance. So there's some overlap there.

I have some very pretty, kind of bohemian looking blouses, and I would put those in that category. There's one I have that's very simple black one that I wear all the time. I like those. I like the prettiness of them, and I always feel really nice in them. I think they complement me well, and I feel comfortable in them.

I think also I have some really, again, going back to the summer thing, some really nice summery dresses that I think are just beautiful, and they just make me feel really beautiful in them. But they're more like date night kinds of things. I'm not going to wear a silk dress just, like, lounging around in my garden.

Haley
Only in my daydream.

Sarai
Yeah, I would like to, but I don't. It's not happening.

I have a slip dress that I made that I absolutely love. I love slip dresses. I think they're so nice and layerable. You can wear them year round if you put a sweater or a turtleneck or something under them. So those, I would say, are my most beloved pieces. They lean more towards the pretty side of things, but there is some practicality mixed in there as well.

Haley
Yeah.

Sarai
What about you?

Haley
I also have a lot of overlap. I feel like my denim falls into that overlap category. It's practical and I love it. I feel good in it. It's my go-to if I want to feel good but can't make up my mind, wear denim.

I think that I also have some prettier tops that fall into my beloved categories. I don't like frilly things, so that tends to come up in more drapey materials or like the silhouette of the top.

I have a cashmere coat, a vintage cashmere coat that's one of my all time favorite pieces. A slip dress, a white floral slip dress that I love. But I only wear it like twice a year. We go somewhere fancy enough for it. Yeah, those are my pieces.

Sarai
Yeah. I would add, actually in I forgot this one. But that black cashmere sweater I mentioned in an episode a couple weeks ago, that one also, it would put in the staples category and probably the beloved category. I think it belongs in both. I wear that one a lot, and I just feel nice in it.

Haley
I think for a lot of people, there may be a subtle difference between clothes they wear most often and clothing that they love or maybe no difference at all. Can you talk about why we are examining those two things separately?

Sarai
Well, I think it's really interesting to see what the overlap is and if there is an overlap or not an overlap. Either way, I think both are interesting to make discoveries about.

It could be that the things you wear the most often are also things you love to wear the most. Or it could be that you have things that you absolutely love to wear and you never wear them. And so it's really about asking yourself questions. And why is that? Are there practical reasons? Are there things that are missing from these items that you love that would make them more practical for you or make you want to reach for them?

So I think it's really interesting to see where those differences are. So just in this discussion we were just having, thinking about, for me, one category is a lot more utilitarian, one category is a little bit more fancy, and I really like the merger of the two. And where do they overlap? Where do they not overlap? I think just brings to mind a lot of ideas about how I might put these things together in the future or which way I want to lean and just thinking about my clothing on those dimensions, which I might not otherwise do.

Haley
Yeah. What do you think that people walk away from this exercise with?

Sarai
I think a way to kind of examine what it is you love about the clothing that you wear a lot, what it is you love about the clothing that you feel strongly about but maybe don't wear as often. And what makes something practical for you right now? What makes something wearable for you?

Because we talk about wearability a lot, and I think a lot of people, when it comes to sewing, when we do Design Your Wardrobe, you want to think about things like, how often will I really wear this? Especially if you want to do something, make a wardrobe that's very practical for you. And so this is kind of a way for you to dig into that and examine it a little bit more and figure out what exactly it is that makes those things wearable to you now so that you can replicate those things in the future.

Haley
In the final exercise, you have people prioritize what they value in their clothing. Which begs the question, Sari, what do you value in your clothing?

Sarai
I think we've talked about some of the things over the course, and I think that's part of the point of doing these exercises together. We've talked about some of those things that have kind of naturally arisen as we've been talking, which is comfort is a big one for me. Mobility is a big one for me. I think a certain, what's the word? Versatility, maybe, I think has come up a lot like something that can be worn in a lot of different ways, that goes with a lot of different things is very important to me.

And also this kind of sense of romance in my clothing makes a big difference to me too. So those are things that have arisen as we've been talking that I think are things that I value and things that I would try to replicate in new things that I was making. So that gives me a really good direction for thinking about my wardrobe long-term and also maybe what I want to sew in the next few months.

Haley
Yeah.

Sarai
What about you?

Haley
For sure, comfort and ease. And by ease, I guess that kind of embodies a few different things. It embodies kind of the versatility that you were getting at before. It also is just like things that just feel effortless to me in my life.

I think another thing that I really value is intentionality, is that I want everything to feel like it has a purpose, that it wasn't just like a default thing. I want it to feel purposeful.

Sarai
Yeah, absolutely. One of the real values of going through these exercises is that I think it's very easy to, if you're not doing something like this, to say, well, comfort is important to me. I already know that. Or being able to move around is important to me. I know that already. But how does that actually play out in the clothing that you wear? And what does that really look like for you? Because it's going to look different for different people. Maybe something you think is very comfortable, is something that you actually never wear because it's not actually that comfortable for some people. Jeans are not that comfortable. The weather's hot. Jeans aren't that comfortable.

Haley
There's a few dimensions to the word comfort. There's, like, our physical comfort, and then there's like, do we feel, like, emotionally comfortable? Do we feel comfortable in our body in that? And I think that those can be two separate things. Leggings can feel physically comfortable, but maybe you don't feel like your absolute best in them.

Sarai
Yeah, definitely. And it depends on context, too, right? It changes. So I think that's why it's so helpful to actually go through these exercises and think a little bit more deeply about what those mean to you and how it plays out for you in real life.

Haley
Is there anything else about digging into the values or what you value in your clothing that you feel like is really important to look at kind of side by side with your staples and your beloved pieces? Because the juxtaposition of the values with that, I think is really interesting, because we talked about values previously, but why is it important to bring it up again in this context?

Sarai
Well, I think it's because when we talked about it previously, we talked about kind of the big values in your life and what you see as the values that you express through your clothing. But I think when you actually dig into it and you look at what you wear, it gives another dimension to it. And it might be the same values that you came up with in the previous exercise, or it might be slightly different. It might be tweaked. And I think that's really interesting too.

I think it's interesting to see after you do a little bit more examination, okay, comfort is still one of my values, but what does that mean to me really? How does that actually get expressed in what I wear? What does that really mean? And so I think it's just a matter of going a little bit deeper or a little bit more into the details of how it comes into being, which I think is very interesting.

Haley
Yeah, I love that. That's definitely the case where before we were kind of talking about our idealized values and this is our practical values, how it actually manifests in what we currently wear.

Sarai
Yeah, absolutely.

Haley
So in the final episode of this series, which is next week, we are going to define our personal styles. So we'll be processing all of these words that we've collected together throughout all of these exercises, and then we're going to distill them down into something you could use. And this will be a small set of style words.

Sarai
Yeah. So this is something that we do in the Style Workshop. And again, if you want to take the Style workshop, we go into a lot more detail about all of these, and we really guide you through the whole process. So this just kind of gives you a taste of what the process is and what you'll get out of it. And again, that launches on July 12. If you want to do it on your own, you can get that ay seamwork.com/go/style-workshop, and we'll put that in the show notes.

Or if you want to join us live on August 4, I'm going to be teaching a live version of the Style Workshop to get us ready for the Design Your Wardrobe program for fall and winter. So that's going to be really fun. If you can make it to the live one, I'd highly encourage you to come to that because it's going to be a blast.

So, again, you can do either one. If you're a Seamwork member, it's free. If you're not a Seamwork member, you can either become a Seamwork member or you can purchase the Style Workshop, and it's only $10. So very affordable.

And we're going to be going through all the exercises and worksheets, like I said. And at the end of it, you're going to have your core style words, just like Haley mentioned. You're going to have these tools to take with you into the future, so you can use them to explore your style again as it evolves. And you'll have a firm direction for creating a core style mood board afterwards, which you can take with you into Design Your Wardrobe, to really craft a wardrobe for the next season that's going to reflect who you are right now.

So it's a great intro for Design Your Wardrobe. It's a great kind of starter. I know a lot of people do it, have been doing it on their own just to get ready for designer wardrobe in the past, but now we have a more comprehensive experience for you, and we get to do it together, which is a lot of fun.

Haley
Way more fun.

Sarai
Yeah. So you can download the toolkit if you're a Seamwork member on your own, if you don't want to do the whole workshop with us. And that's available at seamwork.com/downloads, which you can get all of our free downloads for members there. And during the months of June and July, you can visit the Sewing Camp website, download the PDF, and get a few of the worksheets as a teaser there as well.

And that's going to be it for us this week. If you'd like to join Seamwork and become part of our private community. Plus get access to hundreds of sewing patterns and dozens of so long classes. Plus get access to the Style Workshop for free. Our podcast listeners get a 50% off lifetime discount when you join at seamwork.com/go/podcast50.

And that's it for us this week. I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.