This week I decided to knuckle down and embark on the painstaking task of streamlining my wardrobe. You know the drill - separating everything into three categories: things to keep, things to chuck and things to put in the loft in case they ‘come back’, and hey, if it can happen to neon and leggings, it can happen to a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g.

Things to keep. Well that’s pretty simple. It’s the things I live and die in (and not to mention sleep in). Gone are the days when I would wear something once and put it away for posterity. Now I wear it, wear it again, maybe wear it again the next day, possibly sleep in it, and (depending on its fleece content) walk the dog in it before peeling it from my back and boiling it in the washing machine. It’s ugly but it’s the truth.

Things to chuck. This was not as simple as it should be. This bundle should contain clothes that no longer fit, garments that are dated, and things that I bought whilst taking a momentary leave from my already questionable sartorial sanity. The trouble is that things that no longer fit might fit again, and with a wardrobe that ranges from size 6-16 I’m being as delusional as I am pessimistic. Dated looks could become a la mode - see previous comment on neon and leggings - and those ridiculous items, well, at least they make my wardrobe look a bit fun should anyone happen to take a peak (I will admit to previously arranging my wardrobe for the benefit of ‘passers-by’ but as ever the footfall through my bedroom remains on the light side).

So inevitably everything ends up in the loft. In anticipation of this I went through several bags of clothes that I have in storage at my Mum and Dad’s to make room for the next batch of stuff to take its place…I’m not going to clutter up my own loft after all. Going through those bags was akin to flicking through a photo album in terms of the memories that rose up out of the rags and haunted me like the ghost of fashions past. Despite not seeing these clothes for eons I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of where I bought everything from. The dress that I wore THAT night out in Romford – don’t judge, I was 16 (£20 from the Vestry in Lakeside), the trousers that I wore in Venice and felt amazing in (£35 from Warehouse), the dress that I bought in Sydney because it was a size 6 and fitted ($69 in the sale from the Broadway).

I ended up feeling so nostalgic that I’ve brought the clothes home with me and they’re upstairs now in my wardrobe. So I’ve ended up with more clothes than I started with, which leads me to think that my wardrobe really needs to be streamlined…

Tell me about it, studs.

I was in Edinburgh for the whole of August. I contemplated taking my sewing machine with me but decided that Easyjet probably hadn’t relaxed its rules on hand luggage quite that much. Having worked away from home for the whole of July too, the withdrawal symptoms were setting in before August had even arrived. I knew exactly what I wanted to make next; a bolder-shoulder-padded-black-studded-jacket a la Balmain.

So I set about making the jacket itself in late July using black satin and yellow silk for the lining. I even used interfacing for the first time, to reinforce the collar and lapels, and it is just about that most fun a person can have with an iron. Seriously. (Interfacing is a fusible fabric that, using the heat from an iron, you can adhere to a garment to make it stiff). After firming up the collar and lapels I looked around my flat for other fabric that could do with reinforcing. As such I now have very rigid curtains and my dressing gown can stand up on its own.

The jacket was made but was missing one vital ingredient: the studs. I had to order the studs online and they were being sent from Thailand. They were due to arrive the day that I was setting off for Edinburgh – fastening the studs to the jacket was going to be my in-flight entertainment, but alas, they didn’t arrive in time. Whilst in Edinburgh I had a look around Harvey Nichols and felt like I was being winked at seductively by the bevy of embellishments adorning everything from McQueen clutches, to Chloe dresses and Marc Jacobs bags to Louboutin shoes. All I could think about was smattering my latest creation with little silver pyramids. No prizes for guessing the first thing that I did when I got home. It turns out that a hundred studs don’t go far. So I’ve ordered another two hundred. But I've got me a dilemma.

Everyone who has seen the jacket thinks it looks great as it is with studs just on the shoulders and cuffs. But I have become slightly obsessed with fastening them on, and my plan was to cover the lapels in studs as per Halston. But I’m just two rows in and starting to feel a bit like a Pearly Queen.

So I’m palming the decision off on you, do I go nuts and spill my stud-like load all over the jacket as I originally intended? Or do I go (for probably the first time in my life) for the less is more school of design? Answers on a postcard please.

PS. In the time it has taken this post to load I might have added some more studs. Spot the difference.

The cost: Now this wasn't cheap - I could have bought a jacket and customised it but I wanted to make from scratch. Plus I didn't go for cheap fabric...the yellow silk lining was £30 and the black satin £20. The interfacing was around £5 and the studs all cost me around £25. The (4 pairs of!!!) shoulder pads were £1. Obviously if you get the jacket from a charity shop and just add your own studs the cost is dramatically reduced. But considering the Balmain jacket is in the region of £3000, I consider myself to have made a £2919 saving. Bar. Gain.

Mad Maxi

I’ve had an email from Liz asking for a really super quick and easy-to-make design idea. I didn’t have to think too long and hard about what my response would be: a Glammaxi dress. It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever made and took me the duration of one episode of Eastenders to make from start to finish.

The Inspiration: (Flashback, flashback, flashback...) In 2005 I wrote an article about Roland Mouret and his now legendary Galaxy dress. Mouret’s first collection was shown in 1998 at London Fashion Week. In the article I wrote that each of the fifteen pieces in the collection were made without patterns and were created by draping the fabric over the body and fastening with studs and pins, inspired by images from film where the heroine is dressed only in a bed sheet (think Allison Hayes in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman). This was such a powerful image that it has always stayed with me and was something that was at the fore of my mind when I first made the Glammaxi dress. I love the idea of one sheet of fabric that requires no cutting and just hangs around the body like a forties/fifties film heroine wrapped in bed linen in a post-coital moment of utter femininity.

A glammed up maxi dress

Marchesa silk gown £940

I bought a metre of this fabric (Abstract print crinkle taffeta in black and silver) for £13 which I thought was reasonable considering that it is 140cm wide. The first thing I did was to avert my eyes from Albert Square and fold the fabric in half inside out (so that it now measures half a metre by 140cm) and sew a seam straight down the side of the material so that what you end up with is essentially a long tube.

Then sew a length of elastic all the way around into what will become the top line of the dress (remember to pull the elastic taut as you sew it in order that it becomes elasticated) then do the same for the waistband. Then hem the bottom to the desired length.

Turn the material the correct way round and you have yourself a maxi dress. Pop a little belt around the middle and you’re good to go. However you will have noticed that you are still a good ten minutes away from the duf, duf, duf ending to the episode of Eastenders that you’re watching, and I did promise a Glammaxi to boot.

Next I took two metres of some silver elastic ribbon (49p per metre) and draped it around the top of the dress to give it a more fitted appearance. Once I was happy with how it looked I stitched it in place. (The fact that the ribbon is also elasticated means that the dress can still be taken on and off over the head or hips). To fasten, the ribbon can then simply be tied at the back of the neck. From maxi to glammaxi in 98 pence, and all done in time for Corrie.

The Damage: £14.98

Duf, duf, duf, duf…

Old Tart(an)

Amid my wardrobe I have old favourites; pieces that, despite their age, continue to receive admiring glances and coos of approval whenever I wear them. One of these particular items is a tartan jacket. What makes this jacket especially special is that it was made by the artistic hands of my best bud, Claire. I thank/blame Claire for my dressmaking addiction. She studied textiles at the London College of Fashion and the jacket of which I speak was one of the items in her final graduate collection that I proudly modelled for her. I’m not entirely convinced that I was supposed to step off the catwalk, walk out of the venue and keep the jacket on forever more, but I did.

(Just shows how memories can fail, I was convinced that I wore this jacket but I've just watched the video back over and it was actually worn by someone else, which means at some point I mugged that Polish model of her clothes...)

Whenever Pat, my mother-in-law-to-be (well, he’ll ask me one day…) sees me in the jacket she makes repeated vowel sounds of ‘ooooh’ and invariably ‘aaaah’ and tries it on all the while declaring how perfectly it fits her. By rights I should give her the jacket. Over the years Pat has given me a sofa, several beds, crockery, handbags, furniture and her son. In fact it was Pat who gave me the money to buy a sewing machine for my birthday. I know I should give her the jacket, but I just can’t bring myself to hand it over, I love it too much.

Now when I say I thank/blame Claire for my dressmaking addiction, it’s not because her enthusiasm rubbed off on me. Hells no. There was many an occasion when I would turn up to Claire’s house with a Chinese takeaway by way of down payment and request that she make me a dress to wear to a wedding the following day. I didn’t so much as sew on a button with my own little Luella on hand. But then the unthinkable happened. A gorgeous kiwi farmer went and married Claire and whisked her off to New Zealand. Suddenly I had to sew on my own buttons (after a brief spell of thinking that clipping them on with safety pins was making some kind of sartorial statement). From buttons I progressed onto hemlines and eventually whole garments. When I found myself at the stage where I could make a jacket for Pat myself, I was still reluctant. Firstly, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to pull it off and secondly, it seemed a bit sacrilegious. With the fabric laid out in front of me I felt a bit like Frankenstein standing over the body parts that would ultimately become a monstrous creation…

Although I have changed the main fabric to a green suedette and pink tartan, and have pinned the lapels back using brooches to make it different, it still feels like a pale imitation of the original.

That's not to say that I'm not pleased with the outcome, I am, but it has taught me that one-off works of brilliance are just that. One-off.

Charity Chic

For super cheap chic charity shops have long since been a source of pocket friendly (if not slightly musty) delights, and now that I'm a little bit handy with a sewing machine, kitting myself out in dead people's clothes has taken on a whole new appeal!

For instance, I recently bought this pink and black long pleated skirt for £1.50. A peak at the label shows that it’s made by those 50+ favourites Windsmoor, as they are stocked in various department stores including House of Fraser I took solace in the fact that the skirt was of good quality and was once worn by a natty little granny.

I’m not too keen on the skirt in its current form so I wanted to share with you a couple of quick tips for bringing octogenarian wear bang up to date using only elastic. I bloody love elastic.

Using a safety pin as a guide, I threaded the elastic through the bottom hem of the skirt (in the spirit of cost saving, I used an old bikini strap rather than buy some new elastic) then hand stitched it in place at either end, so the hem is now elasticated.

Then I pulled the skirt up so that it wasn't around my waist but so that I was wearing it as a strapless dress instead. Then I took a belt (that I found some time ago in my own Granny's wardrobe and subsequently liberated) and cinched it in at the waist, et voila, a cute little tulip dress.

Not content with just one look from the bargain bin, if I pull up the newly elasticated hem so that it and the waistband are both around my waist I also have a gorgeous skirt fit for the summer. (Obviously the length of the original item determines quite how mini your skirt will be, too short and Granny Windsmoor will be turning in her grave. Sorry Granny Windsmoor).

So there you have it, two looks for £1.50 and a bit of old bikini elastic.

Similar, but not such a frickin' steal:

Robert Rodriguez chiffon pleated dress £306

Mui Mui satin pleated dress £411

Que Sarah, Sarah.

The idea: A day to evening dress that my friend Sarah can team with flats or heels to wear to any one of the many celebrations planned as she bids a fond farewell to her twenties. Just to make it clear, Sarah is going to be thirty. THIRTY.

The inspiration:

Koi Suwannaga

te Stang dress £929
Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur Exhibition at British Museum

Chartreuse silk Alexa print dress from Monsoon £75

Notes: I actually can’t remember the last time I saw Sarah (one of my oldest friends) in a dress, unless jeans and a vest count as a dress, which they don’t. Sarah doesn’t tend to go for short dresses and as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to this style, the shorter the better. (Although look at Helena Christensen in a poppy print silk day dress in July’s Vogue for knee-length sexy).

Dressmaking Diary: I've found the most perfect fabric in John Lewis. It's £24 per metre and really fits with the look that I'm trying to achieve. It's more expensive than the material that I have so far been using but it is for a special occasion so I will just have to be extra careful and not just cut and hope like I usually do. In terms of the lining, I deliberated over a fuchsia pink or a dark blue. If it was for me, I would have gone for pink to pick out that hint of colour in the fabric, but Sarah really isn’t a pink person, plus she’s got amazingly blue eyes so in the end there wasn’t really a choice to be made. It's satin and is £10 per metre again from John Lewis.

I'm not using a pattern but a past season French Connection dress of mine as a rough template. Sarah tried this dress on and she said that she would prefer for it to be more fitted. Because I want the dress to appear as seamless as possible, all the workmanship and structure will go into the lining, in order that it hangs over the body perfectly but all of the work is busily going on behind the scenes.

With the lining finished and fitted it's just a case of cutting the outer fabric to size in order that it shouldn't require darts, which actually isn’t as easy as it sounds since the fabric is very sheer, frays like a bugger and slides all over the place. I ignored my mother’s advice of always putting the zip in first so as a result I’ve got a bit of excess fabric that needs addressing in the touch-up stage. Grrr.

I have ruched the sleeves and made them shorter than I originally intended after my boyfriend remarked “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sarah wear sleeves”. As I dismissed his comment as utter rubbish I reached for the scissors and hacked away…

I’m making the next bit more awkward than it actually needs to be: the length. Sarah never wears super-mini dresses but I can’t stop myself rolling up the hemline and commenting on how much better it looks. Plus it would look great with a pair of black tights….Must remember that this is not for me so I’m letting the hemline down by an inch, or maybe half an inch. Let’s not be rash. Periodically in times of recession hemlines head north – it stands to reason, the less fabric there is the less costs involved but since I’ve already bought the fabric, and plenty of it come to that, credit crunching is admittedly a weak argument. Let Sarah have the length, then before we go out, once I’ve plied her with booze, she’ll make a gin-induced declaration that

maybe it could do with being a touch shorter, and I’ll whip out my needle and thread and she’ll have a bum skimming hemline before she can say “you didn’t put any tonic in my G&T, hic.”

I have just finished overlocking all the seams and I’m thrilled with the result (an over lock machine stitches around the edges of raw seams for a tidier finish).

Lessons learned:
1. Perhaps overlock the lining seams before the outer fabric is sewn on.

2. Always put the zip in first.
3. Overlockers have replaced the wheel in terms of man’s best invention.

Total cost (not including labour): £46