Saturday, February 02, 2008

Fascination with the Capsule Concept

Ever since I was a teenager, I've been fascinated with the "Capsule Concept" in wardrobe planning. The basic principle is that you have a limited number of bottoms and tops in limited color scheme. Usually about 3 or 4 bottoms, 3 or 4 tops, and a jacket in a 3 color scheme. The idea is that all pieces are completely interchangeable. Every top can go with every bottom. There is a sewing version of this called "SWAP" (Sewing With A Plan). I've always wanted to build a wardrobe using this concept. Since this is the year I'm sewing down my obscene fabric stash, it seemed like a good time to do it. And I wanted to try to do it entirely from my stash. Last night I finished the master plan. I will enter it in an online contest IF I can get 10 pieces sewn by April 30th! The tricky part is trying to predict where I will be in my weight loss efforts by the end of April. :( :( It makes it very difficult to try to cut out a size and to fit to a body I don't have yet. But I'm not going to all this work only to end up being too small for the wardrobe after I reach goal weight. And I AM reaching goal weight this year.

So...anyway...here is my first SWAP effort. It will be a Spring/Summer wardrobe in red, white and blue and is nautically inspired. Last night I did a quick muslin run on the pattern I will use for the polka dot blouse. I was happy with the results. A cute pattern. About 15 pounds too snug right now, but that's the way I want it. I will cut the blouse today! And on the Vogue 8090 front...the jacket is almost ready for photographing. Pants and skirt no where near a reality yet.



Charity

2 comments:

Juliane said...

This looks really neat. What patterns are you using? I particularly like the red skirt.

Unknown said...

The red skirt is a Burda pattern. However, I will mostly be using patterns from my stash and then redrafting and modifying to get the design lines I want. I will post pattern #s, pics and such as I go along.