Mood Boards

There's definitely something in the air. At the same time that I was producing the June Sew Confident! tutorial about using photos and magazine images as inspirations to build mood boards for wardrobe and sewing concepts, my daughter, Alex, was doing a similar thing in her fashion design class at ESMOD design school in Paris, France.

 She is on a one-month sabatical from her fabulous job as Education Manager at Original Sewing and Quilt Expo in Cleveland, soaking up the city and taking lots of pictures of street scenes and architectual details.

I thought you might enjoy seeing the results of our independent thinking processes.

I have enjoyed my relatively new subscription to Anthology. The magazine is a shelter and lifestyle magazine that takes a narrative approach to its coverage of home decor, travel, design, entertaining, and culture and each issue starts with a theme. See more at: http://anthologymag.com.

So to begin a new stream of inspiration for my summer sewing, I started with this interesting cover from the the Spring 2015 Anthology.

Using the fresh green colors, the striped rug, and the white crocheted cactus for inspiration, I gathered some fabrics.

I started fooling around with ideas for how to use the fabrics in garments. I used figure templates (croquis) from a page in The Pantone Fashion Sketchpad (my new best friend) and pasted bits of fabric scraps onto the figures.

I put it all together on a mood board (with more than a little help from Erin!)

And decided to stitch it up!

On the mannequin: Kiwi linen Nine Lives Shirt over the white textured knit eTee with striped linen cropped Valencia Pants. On the bar: Striped knit eTee, kiwi linen Florence Shirt with dark green linen Quincy Pants. 

At the same time in Paris, Alex started with some photographs from her sightseeing adventures.

She pared these down into a few good images.

Sketched her own croquis (no pre-printed sketchpad for her).

And dressed her using cut up pieces of the photos.

I need to take some lessons from this girl!

So I bought a bulletin board, have subscribed to some pretty obscure fashion and style magazines, and purchased some cool stick pins from Target.  I am ready to tear out, collect, pin up, step back and learn to look at things in a different way instead of being so stuck in a rut, sewing one thing at a time without a plan. 

Mood boards are not only fun to make (it's like paper dolls), but they have a purpose. You can start with a little kernel of an idea, keep in within your working space, build on it, change it until the moment is there when it all falls together and you can't wait to start sewing.