Thoughts on SWAP changes

While I totally understand why Deepika changed the rules of this SWAP, I feel that the person who initiated the changes did more damage to herself and her company than she did to the PR SWAP (and I will continue to call it a SWAP, not a Wardrobe Contest). First of all this did not start until after the yearly SWAP was over, voting was completed and the winners were declared. The PR SWAP was initiated by PR members, not Deepika. D was just following the wishes of her members with no intent of stepping on anyone's toes. There was a momentum started because of the earlier SWAP on Stitcher's Guild--people who were not part of the first one, like myself, decided it would be fun to finally get one going now that we were inspired by the earlier one. For goodness sakes, the PR SWAP was nearly six weeks old and half over when this bomb was dropped--at least she should have discussed this with Deepika before blasting the contest on her site. Deepika is very easy to deal with and I am sure that she would have been happy to reach some compromise without everything being made so public by the offender. The majority of us are participating in the PR SWAP to get some coordinating clothes, the prizes are nice, but they are not the inspiration. Had there not been any prizes, I wonder if there would have been such a stink. Competition with the other contest was not the intent--just having fun sewing. I will continue to support Deepika. She has a great site which I have been following since day one.

Besides, the idea of a coordinating wardrobe did not begin with a SWAP. It has been around ever since I can remember. In the early 1980's it was published in Working Wardrobe by Janet Wallach when she introduced the concept of wardrobe capsules where all pieces worked together. I love this book because it is such an inspiration even if it is a little dated with the big shoulder jackets.

Slow Progress

Of course, life never goes according to plan. My long weekend was not as progressive as I had wanted. I ended up spending my Sunday helping my husband (Mr. Train Brain) putting up a hung ceiling over his model railroad layout in the basement. It was only fair since he put one in over my sewing area in the basement over 10 years ago. I owed it to him. I did get both jackets fitted, cut out, and basted the underlining to them.

I spent the past two weeks working on the first jacket Simplicity 4328. I have a tendency to make projects more complicated then they need to be. This jacket pattern is pretty straight-forward, is lined and has no buttons. I chose not to line it and had originally planned to extend the front and include buttons, but this was not to be. My muslin allowed for the buttons, but evidently, I had not thought this out enough and used a looser weave fabric for my muslin than I used for the finished jacket. Once I started sewing the jacket, I discovered that it fit tighter than the muslin. Eliminating the buttons gave me the room I needed. This did sew together quite well. I underlined the body and sleeves in silk organza, covered small shoulder pads and finished the seams with rayon seam tape. I interfaced the facings with fusible light-weight interfacing that I purchased on-line for The Sewing Workshop. I really like this interfacing and plan to buy more. It is woven and I think it would work well in tailored shirts and lighter jackets. Saturday night I managed to write a review on PR . sewing.patternreview.com/cgi-bin/readreview.pl?readreview=1&reviewnum=21202

Overall I am very happy with this jacket and it fits in quite well with the whole SWAP.

I am now progressing on the next jacket which is black linen, also underlined with bound seams. This week is pretty full during the evenings and my sister-in-law is coming to town with her boyfriend for the weekend, so there will be more partying than sewing. Maybe I should post pictures of us having a good time. Yeah!