SWAP Sewing with a Plan We all do it!
Most of those who sew can admit that, despite fortunes spent on patterns, fabric, notions and machines, we often feel we have “nothing to wear.” Why is that? For a start I think our heads get mixed up, confused by the lure of the easy or interesting to sew, fabric bought on sale, the pressure of a backlog of unfinished projects, and good intentions – we simply lose sight of the big picture. In my own case, I can confess to a weakness for jackets and skirts but, until recently,owned only two old tired tops that went with everything.
I don’t think I am alone! Neither does Julie Culshaw. Julie is the owner of the internet fabric and pattern supplier Timmel Fabrics, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and a woman who thinks about sewing, and other sewers, constantly. She is also a friend, and for years has shared her amusement with me about women like us;those who sew constantly but always seem short of things to actually wear.
So, when Julie saw Lynn Cook’s now famous articles in Australian Stitches on Sewing with a Plan (first published in 2003 in Stitches Vol 5 No 2), she knew Lynn was on to something and on to something important.
Determined, as she always is, to share any good sewing idea that she finds, Julie scanned the photos and text of the next issue of Stitches, Vol 5 No 3, illustrating the Plan in action and posted them on her www.timmelfabrics.com website. Sewers and sewing discussion groups being what they are, quickly led Julie’s posting of Lynn’s idea to become a major topic of discussion on www. sewingworld.com. For many sewers the idea of planning a wardrobe along coherent rules provided a real Eureka moment. Lynn’s dazzling pictures in subsequent issues of Stitches, showing how many outfits could be created from a rational core wardrobe, provided inspiration and further fuelled the discussion.
To keep up with this discussion, Sewing with a Plan soon became abbreviated into SWAP as sewers compared virtual notes on how the Plan was being put into action in their ownsewing rooms. To add structure to these discussions, in January of 2004 Julie decided to sponsor a SWAP contest, challenging other sewers to join her in applying Lynn’s rules for wardrobe planning (11 basic garments, two base colours and one print) to their own sewing. In that first contest, 25 women submitted entries, voted on by their peers, and the winners were rewarded with Timmel fabric and gift certificates.
The next year, in 2005, Julie again sponsored a SWAP contest, this time attracting 70 international entries and 27 finalists. As a variation on a theme, the 2005 contest required one garment to be embellished in some way. The 2005 contest also introduced the concept of a wardrobe ‘storyboard’ as a way of illustrating the wardrobe-planning process, inspired by Cate Purcell’s own SWAP storyboard published in Vol 12 No 1 of Stitches. The storyboard concept also launched a series of web pages by entrants so they could post their plans (and hopes and dreams) for a complete SWAP wardrobe as it developed, allowing sewers all over the world to join in and enjoy the works-in-progress.
This year, Julie Culshaw’s Timmel Fabrics has sponsored the biggest SWAP contest yet, with entries from the United States, Canada, and England. Again extending the challenge, each contestant was asked to use at least one pattern and then significantly alter that pattern to produce another garment in the collection. The results of that contest, the winners, their wardrobes, and their own observations on the process, are described in detail in the following pages. To see more of the outstanding work done by all this year’s SWAP participants please visit Julie’s website www.timmelfabrics.com and start planning your own entry into next year’s competition!
The winners of the 2006 Timmel Fabrics SWAP competition:
Sewers of all levels, interests and lifestyles will benefit from a close examination of these and other entries to this year’s SWAP contest. Not only did each sewer produce a remarkably attractive wardrobe, they did so by applying creative interpretation to what are, in most cases, basic patterns. Each wardrobe is full of good ideas that many of us can use and reflect the basic principle of Sewing with a Plan – don’t just sew, plan what you sew and reap the rewards.
The first place winner is Hellene Vermillion who named her SWAP collection ‘Stopping for Tea along the Silk Road.’ Hellene, a painter and artist, says the colours, textiles and paintings of a Japanese television series on the Silk Road inspired her SWAP. Her plan is based on the neutral browns, creams and tans of the ancient landscape, to which she has added red. In addition to meeting the SWAP criteria of 11 garments and a design adaptation of at least one of the patterns, Hellene’s personal goal was to add colour and texture to her garments and to “turn my jackets and coats into more colourful and embellished pieces.” She succeeded on all fronts. The showpiece centre of her collection is her red coat, drafted and then altered from a pattern from the popular Japanese Mrs. Stylebook magazine.
The red wool, like many of the wools Hellene used in her wardrobe, was felted in the washer and dryer, and then lined in red jacquard. The surface design is needle-felted onto the fabric using coloured wool rovings in a floral design, based on the pattern from a Persian rug. Although the coat is not interlined, Hellene quilted the lining to the wool in a spiral design and trimmed the coat, and matching Mongolian hat, in faux lamb. A second piece, a brown wool jacket, is made of washer-and-dryer-felted wool jersey and decorated with needle-felted wool and knitting yarn floral detail embroidery. An interesting aspect of Hellene’s collection is her use of the overlocker. The felted brown wool jacket is finished around
all edges with woolly nylon, with beading added to cover the places where the overlock stitch begins and ends. One knit tunic has all seams reversed, with the overlocking exposed on the right side, and with red lace used to face the sleeves and make the funnel neck. A second, sand-coloured, tunic
uses both sides of the fabric, knit and purl, felted of course, with the seams stitched on the right side of the fabric and the raw edges exposed.
Equally intriguing is a basic boat-neck top embellished with strategically placed wide pintucks. In making this garment, Hellene cut out a larger version of the pattern, 10cm (4in) larger in the front and 7.5cm (3in) larger in the back and placed the ‘baggy’ garment on a dress form, where she proceeded to pin in tucks to shape the top to fit. Transferred to the sewing machine she then zigzagged these tucks in and finished the rough-cut funnel neckline with bias-cut dupion. Not surprisingly, the lower edge of this
spectacular top was finished with a rolled hem with woolly nylon and a glitter gold thread in the looper.
Of her SWAP experience, Hellene says, “I would like to thank Julie for sponsoring this SWAP contest for the third year in a row, and all those who participated and cheered us along. This is the third year I’ve done this and it is worth the stress, the agony, the unexpected wonderful surprises, the wearable garments, and learning what works and what doesn’t, and finding out what we really end up wearing over and over.”
Second place winner, Shannon Murphy, was just as enthusiastic about the process of sewing with a plan and just as pleased with the results. Shannon says, “The first time I heard about SWAP, I was hooked. The whole concept seems to speak to my soul. The planning stage is perfect for my logical, hyper-organised personality. The coordination of colour and the combining of pattern with fabric keeps my
creative side happy as well.” Shannon, a high school chemistry teacher, set out to create
a wardrobe that would be comfortable, easy to wear, but still look professional. Like busy women everywhere, Shannon particularly enjoys now having a wardrobe that “saves me time in the morning too – it is much easier to decide what to wear when everything coordinates so well.”
As Lynn has so often advised in all her writing about the concept of sewing with a plan, Shannon started her planning process around the colours of one fabric, in this case the Neapolitan tweed she used for her coat. The tweed provided the basic tan, brown and burgundy palette and
this unusual, but highly successful, colour scheme is the basis of the compatibility of all her pieces.
The coat, underlined in body and sleeves with Fuse Knit to stabilise the tweed, is lined with a dark brown rayon lining. This same lining is used to line the fauxwrap tan skirt, which has also has a floral appliqué for interest. Shannon also used real creative problem-solving to integrate a chocolate ottoman into her colour scheme by adding a tan and brown fringe to the neckline, accented with burgundy beads, to ensure that this top can be worn with the burgundy as well as the other brown garments in the collection. She also topstitched several of the tops extensively to add interest and showed her determination as a sewer with her beautiful shirred wrapped top, copied from ready-to-wear, that took her eight hours, five pattern drafts and five muslin toiles to perfect. Shannon admits that she abandoned this top after “the third muslin and a lot of hair pulling” but that “two weeks later, I decided to take a crack at it again. I guess I just needed to walk away from the frustrating situation and let it stew in
my subconscious, because this time it went favourably” – a creative process that so many sewers can identify with!
A reminder to us all – keep challenging yourselves with new ideas and goals when you sew; just look at
Shannon’s results.
Third place winner, Jeanette Morrison, had been an observer of last year’s SWAP competition and started then to collect fabric so she could join in this year. A stay-at-home mum, Jeannette put together a very stylish wardrobe to have on hand for the dressier events in her life, like going to
church and to meetings. Key to her collection are her knitwear black ‘shrunken
cardigan’ which is very chic with the white trim, a ruffled knit wrap cardigan, and a blue tweed three-quarter coat. All three items add a fashionable edge to Jeanette’s more dressed
up events, but can also be worn as a trendy touch to her daytime jeans, casual pants, T-shirts and tank tops. Crossover garments like these are important elements that will allow you to integrate new SWAP clothes into an existing wardrobe. The pleated skirt, to which she added calculator-figured pleats to a basic skirt pattern, copying a skirt she saw in a magazine, is among Jeannette’s favourite garments. She notes that although the skirt, once she worked out how to add the pleats was a fairly easy project, “I would never have tried it if it weren’t for the SWAP.”
As a first time entrant in the competition, Jeannette says that, Sewing with a Plan has revolutionised the way she sews, “Ever since I saw the SWAP last year, I’ve changed the way I buy clothes and fabric. I tend to get items that work together instead of having ‘orphans’ the way I used to. It is a great way
to think about sewing and clothes in general and I’m really glad I participated in this year’s SWAP. Everyone who finished is truly a winner with a great new wardrobe!”
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