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Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Never Say Never - Sew Chica Sew on Vacation

I said I would never, ever travel to Europe with a backpack as my luggage.  I would always carry compact but chic luggage having all of my necessities and fabulous outfits at hand without looking frazzled.  Well as the saying goes, "Never say never."  Look at this:




In preparing for Prof. R's and my July vacation to Croatia and Northern Italy I was inspired by the Lady Light Traveler website.  Why not travel for 2 1/2 weeks in Europe with nothing but a carry-on and a shoulder bag?  Well, I did it!!  How did I achieve this feat?  I created a capsule wardrobe for the trip, using Lady Light Traveler and The Vivienne Files for inspiration.  If you're not familiar with this concept, a capsule wardrobe is basically a collection of garments that interrelate with each other.  In order for the items to work together, the colors of each must coordinate.

I started my wardrobe based on core colors, black, white and orange.  And here it is in total (all clothing to the left of the orange and skull print pareo is me made):





5 tank tops - 2 me made, McCall's 7127 and McMalls OOP 4514
2 me made skirts - Simplicity 1500 and McCall's 6694 now OOP, skirt only
1 pair of me made pants (these are quick dry pants that I made for our trip to Thailand in 2014 - pre-blog)
1 skort previously blogged here
1 purchased long sleeve t-shirt
1 gifted linen blouse used as "sweater"
2 LBDs - 1 me made, Simplicity 1652
1 purchased pareo
1 pair of walking shoes
1 pair of super light tennis shoes
1 pair of black flip flops
1 pair of walking sandals
1 pair of rhinestone super comfy evening sandals
1 old RTW bathing suit
1 sun hat

Not pictured:
1 purchased hoodie
1 purchased orange sweater
1 gifted white and black polka dot scarf
sunglasses
toiletries

There were so many mix and match possibilities that I didn't get bored with my clothes during the trip, and because of the variety, I was able to dress appropriately for every occasion.

"Want to go bike riding on the Stari Grad in Hvar?"

" Well yes, I'll just throw on my black skort and white tank top."

Ice Cream in the foreground, bike in the background














"Yes, I'd like to go to the outdoor theater in the castle in Dubrovnik to see Hamlet.  I'll just put on my little black dress, my rhinestone wedges, my dangly necklace, and I'm ready to climb up the hill for the show."

After I check out the porn sculptures, of course.

"Oh, I need to cover my shoulders to enter the cathedral?  No worries, I'll just pull out my pareo to wrap over my top half."  Etc., etc.

The pareo also provided protection from the blazing hot sun!


Besides all of the clothing working well, carrying such a light load turned out to have some advantages.  I'm glad I didn't try pulling a roll-aboard up these steps:




















There were also times on the trip where the chivalrous Prof. R. carried my pack and his roll-aboard, and gone were his complaints about my bringing too much!

Here are some additional ways I wore these separates:

Hiking in Plitviches, Croatia

Hiking in the Dolomites, Italy

There's apfulstrudel and beer waiting for me at the top!

The fort in Hvar


The market in Split

My favorite outfit of the bunch was the palm tree two piece skirt and crop top set.

At the Roman amphitheater in Pula

Our hotel in Pula

I fell pretty hard for this fabric from Girl Charlee and just had to have it.  I have to say, this set is the only part of this wardrobe that I wasn't tired of after vacation, and I wore it several times over the summer.  This outfit just makes me feel summery and fun and reminds me of "playclothes" we used to wear as children.  The skirt pattern, Simplicity 7500, suggests wovens but this knit worked well.  I just eliminated the zipper and pulled it on - I didn't even add elastic.  Super easy!  This fabric has such nice recovery, it doesn't get stretched out of shape pulling on and off.

For the top, I shortened the pattern to the length of a RTW top that I like.  I loved the pizazz this outfit added to my mainly solid colored wardrobe.

Since we're big on going out at night, coupled with the fact that I like to dress up; I had the 2 LBDs but by pairing the me made black skirt with the me made black tank I made another LBD outfit.  I was set for any and all evening events!

McCall's 7127 on top and 6694 on bottom




The trip itself was amazing!  This was our first time in Croatia, and we loved it.  The people are really friendly, the food is really good (trust me, we had quite the sampling) and there's enough amazing sights to see without it being overwhelming.

The second part of our trip we spent in the Dolomites in Northern Italy in conjunction with Prof. R's conference.  During his free hours, we hiked, I took a cooking class (all in Italian - it came back!) and we ate some more.

One of the best parts of traveling: making new friends

More new friends

Cooking class in Italy.  It was sooo good!



For our last night we feasted on Stinco di Maile, Schweinshaxe or Pork Knuckles!


I just have a few more summer related items to sew (we had a high of 90F today!), then I'm on to some fall projects.  What did you do for your summer vacation?

I defeated the Lannisters and gained the Iron Throne!



Hasta Pronto!




1 comment :

  1. Great travel wardrobe, really good ideas and I like all the black, white and orange...not once did it make me think of Halloween.

    ReplyDelete

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