Fabric shopping in Singapore and my holiday capsule wardrobe
Hi everyone!
Here I am again after two weeks away and wanted to share with you some bits of my trip to Singapore and Indonesia and overall, a review on how well the holiday capsule wardrobe I created for the trip worked out (spoiler alert: a couple of garments were almost destroyed, hehe). If you don’t know what the #cocowawasummersewingchallenge is all about there’s a post and a vlog you can read and watch about it.
Holiday capsule wardrobe
So! Let’s start! I have to say that in general all the garments I made were perfect for this trip. Most of the fabrics I used were double gauze (totally recommend it if you travel to a very hot place), light jersey, linen and viscose. On that front, very happy with my choices and how all the garments combined with each other. I was travelling with just a backpack so used a lot all the garments I brought which were not many, so I kept combining them each day.
Regarding the quality of my sewing… ha! That’s another story. With this I mean that because I had to make so many things in such little amount of time, there were some problems along the way. Not with everything of course, but there was one garment that ended up completely destroyed and it was the Carlotta shorts from Wear Lemonade. You can see them in this picture.
I wore them almost every day during the day combined with t-shirts or tops so maybe that’s one of the reasons… I should have made two I think and also the fabric chosen was not the correct for this pattern. It was a very light denim, like chambray, and I think it required something tougher…
That being said, they resist till the end although the button was lost (hahaha), the back pockets almost falling off and all the overlocking stitch I did on the inside of the front pockets was constantly on display… This annoyed me so much! But anyway.
Regarding the rest of the garments, I only had a bit of a problem with one of the t-shirts I made, the Inari Tee in jersey that you can see down here and was that some of the thread of the hem became undone, but nothing I can’t fix now.
Another garment that gave me a bit of a problem was the jumpsuit.
I had already have a problem with it before the holidays while incorporating the elastic at the waist. When attaching the bodice to the trousers, the pattern said to use a 1cm allowance, or at least that’s what I understood, but then it was almost impossible to create the tunnel for the elastic with so little seam.
And so during the trip, part of the tunnel become undone and the elastic went for a walk in the park, hahaha. Also, one of the stripes unstitched itself as well cause I did previous horrible job fixing it by hand…
But! Apart from this, the rest of the garments worked very well and I am really happy to wear all these again next Summer… Here are some of the other pieces I made.
The infamous Carlotta shorts and the Peplum Top
My favourite look: Inari tee and a Marilla Walker skirt
Super comfy République du Chiffon dress
Perfect look for a day visiting temples in a Simply Sew blouse
So, happy in general with the results and looking forward to plan more capsule wardrobes for Autumn and Winter and the next seasons. I think it is a great way to really analyze what we already have and what we need to make.
Fabric shopping and textiles
Now, I also wanted to share with you a bit of the fabric shopping that can be found in Singapore on one hand and also the lovely ikats and batiks from Bali and other islands of Indonesia.
Regarding Singapore, apart from being an amazing city (it combines incredible buildings and architecture with more traditional areas like Chinatown or Little India and amazing nature), there are a couple of places were you can go and find some fabric for yourself 🙂
First, People’s Park Complex, a kind of shopping centre, opened (so it’s very much hot like outside) and which has several fabric shops. I specially liked the ones with Japanese fabrics. I tried to find something I really need it, but was not very lucky.
The building from the outside
And these are some of the shops you can find…
Fabric that you didn’t need to iron apparently…
If you like satin and more special fabrics, then Arab Street is your destination, packed with stores that reminded me of Goldhawk Road in London and a latest discovery on my last day, Spotlight, a craft shop with lots and lots of fabrics on the famous Orchard Road.
For those of you in love with ikats and batiks, Bali and some of the other islands are the perfect place to find more about this art, the weaving techniques and much more… I discover a few shops selling these two lovely types of fabric and was a bit sad that in the end I couldn’t go to the village of Tenganan, in the same Balli, where you can see first hand how women weave there by hand.
Ikat shop in Ubud
Woman at the Ikat shop making an offering for a ceremony
Lots of lovely batiks
I wanted to buy some fabric but it was extremely expensive
Some batik garments on display
In the end I didn’t buy any fabric as I am trying to make more intelligent decisions regarding my handmade wardrobe and don’t getting that fabric that will end up unused on my stash, but enjoyed very much visiting the shops and knowing more about the traditional batiks and ikats. I think I liked more for example Japan, where all your fabric dreams become a reality, hahaha, but it was a lovely experience anyway.
Hope you liked this post. Let me know if you’ve ever been to Singapore or Bali and your experience there and what do you think about the handmade capsule holiday wardrobe review. Love hearing from you!
See again soon lovely sewists!
Happy sewing,
Ana
xxx
