So. That sewing with a plan concept. Let's start with analyzing my recent plan-free sewing:

What I made and I wear:

Black linen Liberty Shirt
Red linen Liberty Shirt
Black linen gored skirt
Pink silk crepe cowl neck top

What I made and don't or rarely wear:

Two white notched-collar blouses
One green notched-collar blouse
Red and white polka dot cowl neck top
Green and white polka dot tunic.

An obvious pattern is the Liberty Shirt versus the notched-collar shirt. The Liberty Shirt is easy to make and feels satisfyingly solid when done. It's terribly comfortable and doesn't need any fussing or rearranging when worn.  It does need pressing, but that's just to smooth it out, rather than fighting with recalcitrant facings and twisted bits.

The notched-collar shirt is more fitted and shorter, so it takes more fussing. It's designed with loose facings; I stitch them down but that always involves a little arguing. I don't like the sleeves with either cuffs or a turned hem. The collar (it's that HotPatterns notched collar) always involved a moment of "will it work?" suspense.

Oh, and the Liberty Shirts are all in pure linen, while none of the notched-collar shirts are.

So it appears that the sensible thing is to make more linen Liberty Shirts, and meanwhile to lengthen the notched-collar shirt, give it sleeve vents like the Liberty Shirt, and audition it in some linen to see if I wear it. I do love the faintly retro feel of that shirt, but apparently not enough to wear it.

Moving on, what I expect to make and likely succeed at:

Black wool/rayon gored skirt
Matching Liberty Shirt
Grass green Liberty Shirt
Chocolate brown gored skirt
Cream linen Liberty Shirt
Amber/pumpkin Liberty Shirt

This seems sort of plannish, in that all of the Liberty Shirts (black, red, black again, green, cream, pumpkin) should go with all of the skirts (black, black again, brown.)

Fun plans with lower odds of success:

Cassis gored skirt  (Cassis, you ask? OK, OK, purple.)
Matching Liberty Shirt with dark cassis silk facings.
Sewing Workshop Haiku Two jacket in a tweedy green cotton flannel with green silk facings
An improved version of the notched-collar shirt pattern, in a pink Japanese cotton with green polka dots

Plannish? The cassis shirt should work with its matching skirt, both black skirts and might play nice with the brown skirt. The cassis skirt... um...yeah. It would probably work with the cream shirt. Maybe the green shirt. It wouldn't actually clash with the black shirt, but I think all that visual weight on top will be weird.

The green jacket should work with all the skirts, but I'm not sure if the shape pairs well with the shape of the Liberty Shirts.

The Japanese cotton shirt has no friends other than maybe the black and brown skirts. I think that it's part of another, so far unplanned, family/capsule.

Hmmmm.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Joining yet another sewalong: Make all my clothes for a year

So I make sewing plans--for the Autumn 6PAC, for a SWAP, for the PatternReview Mini Wardrobe contest--and then I do whatever I darn well please. Not that that's a bad thing; it's my sewing time and my wardrobe, after all. But I am sold on this whole planning concept and I'd like to actually carry out a plan or two.

I've joined yet another sew-along, one with more flexibility: the Make All Your Clothes For A Year sewalong on PatternReview. My definition of "all" is not going to include underwear, hosiery, raingear, or, really, most accessories. Oh, and I will likely buy the 2013 OSF souvenir tee and the 2013 Daedalus Project tee and possibly another souvenir tee or so. Otherwise, I'm planning to make every new clothing item that I acquire, from 9/2/2012 to 9/1/2013.  Bwaha!

Now to figure out the planning part.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Sewing: Autumn 6PAC, Part Two (Today, it's black and green.)

A couple of posts ago, I predicted a description of my black and purple Autumn 6PAC. Since then, I switched back to black and green. Will I stick to that through the end of writing this post? I'm not counting on it. But right now, the plan is:

• Neutral Jacket: A Sewing Workshop Haiku Two jacket, the long version, in a black wool boucle from the stash that I've already tested for washability. The boucle is fairly bulky--I suspect that I might need to buy a lighter fabric for facings and such.
• Neutral Bottom: Burda 8973, a close-fitting six-gore skirt with a bit of a trumpet skirt flip at the hem, in lightweight black denim, and I'll eliminate the lining. I'm specifying denim because I've been unable to find black wool crepe online; if I find some and a swatch survives the Wool cycle, I'll switch to wool and restore the lining.
• Neutral Top: I already have two black linen shirts, one self-sewn, one purchased. So I could just skip this and still have a functional 6PAC. But if I finish all of the other garments, my plan is to make something turtleneckish with a lightweight black maybe-wool knit from the stash that's also been tested for washability.
• Second Color Jacket: Another Haiku Two jacket in a gorgeous thick grassy-green cotton flannel wih a woven (not printed) pattern that gives it a woolly tweedy vibe. The change from purple to green is the flannel's fault; I just found it today. This one will also require special attention to keep the seams from being too thick.
• Second Color Top: A Sewing Workshop Liberty Shirt in grass-green linen from the stash.
• Two-Color Top: Er. I have nothing in the stash. I just fell in love with a silk charmeuse print in moss and black on Emma OneSock, but it's over fifty dollars a yard, so I'm firmly squelching that love.

So, it's a plan. For at least twenty minutes.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: The Greek Food Festival Effect. And getting motivated for the Autumn 6PAC

So, have I ever mentioned the Greek Food Festival Effect on this blog? See, long, long ago, Himself and I went to school in Pittsburgh, and every year a Greek food festival was held nearby. Every year we planned to go--unambigious, firm, gonna-go-eat-dolmas plans. Every year, for one reason or another, we didn't or couldn't go. After enough repetitions, we finally decided that there was some cosmic force at work, preventing us from going. The logical conclusion was that if we ever did go to a Greek food festival, something extraordinarily bad would happen. By preventing us, the universe was just protecting itself.

Other events, such as the Backstage Tour at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, have achieved Greek Food Festival Effect status--for perhaps fifteen years, we intended to go, and never did. I'm tempted to request tickets one last time and show up eating a gyro, just out of sheer contrariness.

My point? My point is that I'd better do the Stitcher's Guild Autumn 6PAC this year. Stitcher's Guild is a sewing website and forum. It has a seasonal group sewing event called the 6PAC. It stood, originally, for "six piece autumn collection" (I think), but as I understand it, the acronym had so much appeal that it's used for all the other seasons, too. The idea is to sew six garments for the upcoming season, the garments and colors chosen based on specific guidelines.

I planned to participate in the 2012 Spring 6PAC. And the Summer one. And the 2012 SWAP (Sewing With A Plan, a larger sewalong). I seem to recall halfheartedly planning to do past SWAPs, maybe 2007, 2008, something like that. I bought some fabric. I puttered with some patterns. I never did any of them. See the GFFE building up here?

This year's rules call for the creation of a top, bottom, and jacket in one neutral color, plus another top and jacket in a second color that can be neutral or not, plus one more top in a print containing both colors. A "bottom" in this context is skirt or pants or shorts or kilt or whatever. A jacket is a jacket or a cardigan or overshirt; I don't know if a coat or vest would qualify, though I suspect that if I read the rules more carefully, that question would be answered.

The idea is that all of these garments will go together. The overarching idea is that you will actually wear them. Now, you'd think that that would be a given, when sewing clothes, right? Not so much.

For example, in my fabric stash I have a piece of burnout velvet with an orange chiffon'y background and big, roughly 3-centimeter dots made up of concentric circles of dark purple, violet, orange, lime green, and yellow. This piece of fabric excites me more than any other item in my stash. I'm imagining making it up in an angled long-jackety shape and dressing up as a Laugh-In witch at Halloween.

Then there's the bright amethyst purple silk charmeuse. I bought that to make pipings for whatever I make out of the piece of lime-green-and-purple silk brocade that's on the other side of the shelf. If there's enough left, I could add piping to the orange polkadot chiffon.

You begin to see the problem? Now, not all sewers create unwearably gaudy garments--some create unwearably elegant or dressy garments. Some craft fine couture confections in delicate all-natural materials, wear them once, and leave them in the "dry clean/hand wash" bag for a year. Some make garments that look just dandy to everyone else's eye, but the sewer sees them as having that homemade look and never wear them out of the house.

A sewalong that requires me to sew sensible, wearable garments would be a good exercise. I'm trying to use only patterns that I've already fitted and worn, and use as much fabric from my stash as possible. And I'm trying not to think of all of this as the hobby equivalent of eating nice healthy raw broccoli. I'll be delighted with the garments when they're done--they'll be girl clothes that fit me. It's just the actual sewing that will feel uncomfortably sensible.

So what will I make? That keeps changing. Even the colors keep changing. I was going to use black and red, and then black and yellow, and then brown and yellow, and then black and green, and right now it's black and purple/magenta/violet. Of all of those, I like brown and yellow best, but I already have too many yards of fabric in not-quite-the-right-shade of brown that I may never use.

What would my black and purple 6PAC look like? That's the next post.

Image: By StephanieD. From Wikimedia Commons.