I am once more attempting the SWAP Contest at Stitcher’s Guild and this year the SWAP focuses on fitting, and making tried-and-true patterns: testing and fitting paper patterns, muslins, and fashion garments that will help lower the overall sewing failure rates,  result in fabulous clothing to be proud of, and (hopefully) give every contestant a pattern or two that works every time it is used.

You choose any seven garments from this list:

Button Down Shirt w/Collar         
Blouse or shirt   (collar is optional)               
T-Shirt         
Vest                               
Overshirt               
Dress           
Jeans
Trousers     
Shorts or Capri Pants     
Skirt 
Jacket (jean jacket, windbreaker, hoodie, etc.)                   
Coat  (suit or sport coat)
Overcoat or Raincoat   
Bathing Suit Coverup  

From those seven, you can choose four to make twice for a total of 11 garments that will work together.   Those four may either be repeated garments from the same pattern, or one each from two different patterns.

The contest runs from 26 December 2011 until 30 April 2012 and you can have 2 previously sewn garments amongst the total 11.

Now I’m planning on using my last 2 garments as the pre-sewn items, so it looks like Navy will feature quite strongly in my SWAP.

The garments I have chosen so far are:

2 x Blouse or Shirt – Vogue 8572  (OOP)
– Burnt Orange – completed 
– Navy/Gold/Brown – completed

1 x Dress – Simplicity 2648 
– Navy linen with pickstitching – completed

2 x Jeans – Jalie 2908 
– White Jeans completed
– Navy Jeans completed.

1 x Jacket – Vogue 7975 
– Navy with some seam details added

1 x Skirt – Vogue 7937
– Navy linen, View A – completed

1 x Raincoat – Minoru 1103 
– Navy ripstop – pattern adjustments done and fabric cut out and nearly finished.

1 x Shorts – Sure Fit Pants
– Navy twill – completed

1 x Vest – Jalie 3129
– Navy linen – completed
   
2 x Knit Tops 
– Navy/Green striped using Kwik.Sew 3740 – completed
– Brown/Navy/Cream abstract print from Fabulous Fabrics using BWOF 02-2009-108

The remaining 4 garments are still a question mark:

• Do I make 2 knits tops, but
• I really need shorts, which can be a test for the fit for pants 🙂 1 pair now in the plan
• I will need a navy skirt to go with the jacket (fingers crossed I have enough fabric) Now in the plan
• I really want to fit the Connie Crawford B5300 shirt, but not sure if I have a shirt fabric that will go with the Navy as I’m tyring to work from my stash.

 Now I need to make some final decisions and that includes a name for my SWAP.

As I don’t like having a pictureless post, I thought I would share with you one of Roscoe’s favourite things to do:

It takes days to get the sand out of his fur 🙂

22/1/2012 – Plan edited – Jacket out and Skirt in.
17/4/2012 – Plan edited – Shorts, Vest and 2 knits tops are in.

This is my first completed “bottom” for SWAP 2009 the brown cropped pants.

The pattern was fitted for me by my sewing teacher before she moved to Queensland.

I found one of the adjustments interesting, it is a diagonal tucks across the front leg (I have drawn it in blue to highlight it but the actual tuck is not quite as straight as the blue line).

The other adjustment was on the back pattern piece, a 1cm tuck was taken from the bottom of the waist dart all the way down the leg to the hem and then this was tuck further increased from just below the crotch curve and back to the original tuck for a length of 26cm.

And now, the back view ….

Story Board

Well here is what I have decided so far:

A number of the patterns are TNT’s and the two pants patterns have been toiled although this was before I gained the extra weight from the gym.

As you can see there are two pieces of fabric that don’t have a pattern with them so far. I’m desperate for tops and really don’t want to make the same 3 styles all the time, so am trying to find new patterns.

The red woven is partialy completed and hope to have it ready to show by the end of the weekend.

I then think I will do a wearable toile of the casual pants in a mustard colour stretch cotton that I picked up in Brisbane during the ASG Convention.

Okay the stash has been spread around the sewing room and as most of my sewing buddies will tell you there is a lot of brown in there LOL.

Working on the twist of “Real Life Week” I can say that my week is working in an office full-time (although not corporate) and then on the weekends I sew with my sewing buddies or go to the Australian Sewing Guild Meetings as well as shopping. We enjoy going to the Sydney Theatre Company’s Plays on a regular basis so I have included this as well as this area is lacking in my wardrobe.

On that basis, I have chosen the following fabrics:

Now to go through the pattern stash and work out if I have any TNT patterns for these fabrics or whether I need to get moving on some toiles.