Craft Rage

I am heartily inspired by those on my blogroll. It's actually a much bigger roll than what shows on my page; I haven't yet mastered the art of importing from Google Reader yet, so if your blog was on there before, it will be again, once I get off my duff and get it in.

I digress. I always get very inspired by reading what everyone else is up to. Most interesting to me is watching people build their SWAP wardrobes. Next year, I think I might sew along while everyone's SWAPping, or maybe even enter myself, though I'm not sure if my skills will be up to the challenge at that point. In the meantime, for practice, I've come up with an idea that will likely sound ridiculous to you, but makes perfect sense to me!

It's my own personal Un-SWAP-SWAP.

Since I made the committment last month to drop 10 dress sizes by next April, I have begun to shrink a bit. Not a whole lot - fast isn't the answer for me, personally - but I'm shrinking nonetheless. When I started this, my dress size was somewhere between 22 or 24, and my measurements equated to a 28W or 30W, on pattern labels. Size 24 dresses no longer fit me properly, so I'm a solid size 22, right now, which still equates to a 28W.

I have a number of patterns in my pattern stash that go up to 28W, but at some point, I'm going to shrink out of these patterns. Since I bought these patterns because I liked them, I'd really like to sew them up before they "expire".

Here's my plan;

I pulled all the patterns in my stash that either go up to 28W, or that I feel I will be able to upsize properly. There are 15 in total, and more may be added when the summer patterns go on sale.

Of these 15 patterns, I will sew one garment from each pattern envelope, be it a dress, or a skirt, or pants, whatever. My preference is to use fabric that's already in my stash, but I'm not crazy enough to swear off buying fabric or patterns while I do this.

Here are the patterns - you can click them to see larger versions, if you wish;

In addition to these items, I'm also trying to frankenstein a retro swimsuit, so that I don't have to go through the hell of swimsuit shopping this year.

Now, I'm not a total kook - I know that the patterns above are multi-size patterns, and that I'll have more of a window to make these than just the next few months. But this isn't a project one can complete overnight, so by the time I'm done with this, it will be time to start over, with my smaller patterns. Hopefully, anyway. And in the meantime, I'll have cute, flattering clothes to wear, to get my friends used to seeing me in something other than jeans and T's.

I'm calling this project "One Of Everything", and if you look along the right side of my blog, you'll see a progress list. I feel good about having a plan, even if it's not a plan to make matching outfits - I'm not very good at coordinating this with that anyway, so likely the jumble will suit my personal style (or lack thereof) perfectly!

Enough rambling - I have some sewing to do!

Labels: one of everything, size 12