SWAP Progress

To date I've completed five of my 11 garments. I really like a few of the pieces, especially the white blouse. I've never finished a SWAP before, but I've started more than a few in my lifetime.


The colors I picked out were navy, burgundy and white. These are colors that look good on me and I had almost all of them in my stash.


The first garment I made was this silk knit tie-neck Coldwater Creek knock-off top. I drafted the pattern from my TNT KS 2900. I've made this pattern four times now, but I don't think I'm ready to retire it quite yet.


I tried out a new pattern for the moleskin pants. It has a wider leg than I'm used to and I probably made them too long at least for these shoes. I may go back and alter them, but I may not. They won't be my first pick in the wardrobe, but they do work with everything else and several other things already in the closet.

The white blouse is my favorite of all the pieces so far. It's made from the TNT pattern I talked about in my last blog post. The fabric is a beautiful embroidered cotton. The embroidery puckered up the fabric and completely eliminated the need for ironing. I used white Kona cotton for the facing and didn't use any interfacing since the Kona cotton is so much heavier than the fashion fabric. I must have 200 buttons in my stash, but none of them would work for this blouse. Since I'm trying to not spend any money right now, I decided to buy the 90 cent a card buttons from Joann's. I think the plain buttons look good with this highly decorated fabric. Sorry I haven't washed out the buttonhole marks yet.


I don't have a long sleeve pattern for this blouse so I took the puffed sleeve pattern, folded out 3" from the center and cut it out adding length and narrowing toward the hem as I cut. I did have to true the cap after I cut it out. After sewing the sleeves in and hemming them, I discovered I didn't narrow the hem enough. To fix this, I just added two buttons folding out two inches which made a cute little pleat. The buttons are sewn on top of the fabric, no buttonholes were necessary. I really like the way these turned out. I must draft a real pattern for the long sleeve for next time I use this pattern.


The last two garments I've finished are the twin sweater set. For the top I used KS 2900, which is the same pattern used for the blue tie-neck top. Because the poly/rayon/lycra Sophia knit doesn't have any stretch in length and very little in the width, I added a dart and 1/2" to the side seams. I should have added more than the 1/2" to the sleeves as they are just a tiny bit too narrow. In this picture I have a decorative stitch on the neckline where I just folded the edge over. But, as you can see, the neckline was gaping some and even more with the cardigan. So today I spend about 3 hours unpicking the stiches and put on a binding. The binding mostly eliminated the gaping. I was afraid to pull it too tight which would have caused puckers. So, I'm going to live with the slight gape.


The cardigan is another pattern that I've sewn before. It's New Look 6735 which was a Best Pattern for 2008 on Patternreview.com. I shortened it two inches, but I'm only 5'1" tall. I didn't want to look like a little girl wearing her mom's clothes. I had to also buy new buttons for the cardigan. I'm beginning to think it's a waste for me to have a button stash. I never can find the right button in my collection.

There you have it. My Fall 2009 Sewing with a Plan so far. I have the denim jeans and the corduroy pants already cut out. Since my sub job for tomorrow was canceled, I'll probably work on them. I can't decide if I want to sew them separately, or in assembly line fashion. I'm using the same pattern for both and they are the same color, just different fabrications. I'm hoping the corduroy is more dressy than the denim but just as comfortable. This is a casual wardrobe, so both will fit right in.