I get inspiration for the clothes I sew for K all over the place: my Pinterest boards are out of control, I look through my Japanese pattern books all the time, and I seem to get about a dozen catalogs in the mail every week (Anthropologie, Mini Boden and JCrew get the most attention). And don’t get me started on all the blogs!

But I am most inspired by people I see in passing. I can barely remember what I cooked for dinner the night before, but I rarely forget outfits. I’ve always been this way. Recently I saw a posh woman, sliding into her car, wearing mile-high black heels and a short dark brown coat with a mini, poufy skirt. It was cinched at her waist just so, and looked oh so fancy and not at all trashy. It made me so curious: where would you wear something like that at 10am on a Tuesday, bare-legged in the cold, February morning? I loved it though.

And then I saw a young woman at a cafe, sporting the perfect grey knitted scarf with a sweater of a very similar hue, and there was the poufy mini skirt again. I adored the super long knee-high socks she wore and stored the outfit away in the back of my mind. And so ideas start percolating and I look through my patterns and fabric to create the silhouette I have mentally designed. Often, I get sidetracked by one fabric or another and begin to imagine other possibilities, tucking that original idea away for another time. My plans for a poufy mini turned into the suspender skirt, for example.

What inspires you to sew? Is it usually a pattern? A certain fabric? A particularly stylish girl you see in a magazine? I’m inspired by them all!

In other sewing news, I took the advice I received from a few of you and got the Wiksten Tova pattern – I’m taking the plunge to sew for myself after a three year hiatus! I have some Essex linen prepped and I just might have something to show you soon….