Barbara's Useful SWAP part one

For those of you who aren't following these things I am joining in this year's Stitcher's Guild Sewing With a Plan venture - doing the 11 units - six tops, four bottoms and a jacket.

With it being dark and gloomy outside, and cold, with a storm coming in tonight I decided to start off with a bright pink linen shirt.

Nothing in my SWAP is exciting - this is entirely an exercise in wearable clothes for ordinary day wear.

I used a version of the Annie StyleArc blouse, eliminating the yokes as I was short on fabric and for the same reason making short sleeves. What I like most about this pattern is the nice collar/neckline. Also as a gesture to speed sewing, and the less fitted look of the new blouses this coming season (based on the new patterns and more significantly what I am noticing on the Spring collections on Style.com), this is pretty basic and boxy.

Because it was such an easy project I decided to do some wing needle stitching around the collar and sleeve hems.

This is a super easy treatment that works very well in linen. 

Basically all you need is the most simple of reverse action "stretch" stitches (one in which the needle goes in the hole more than once doing that annoying super slow stitching thing) or an "heirloom" decorative stitch that operates the same way on your machine. The stitch I used on my Pfaff looks like a line of small vertical crosses.

On the hem of the blouse I used a plain needle and a reverse action straight stitch and made my buttonholes with the cross-stitch stretch version.

All this minimally fancy stitching was done with a rayon thread, because, well, I found some when I was cleaning out my sewing room on the floor. 

I have decided to just do mostly dressmaker dummy shots of my SWAP garments until I am finished. As opposed to the regular live dummy shots.

Here is the finished blouse and the details:

Now onto the next blouse. Same pattern, my Liberty fabric. A few more days off and I am going to indulge myself as much as I can in staying cozy and sewing before the deluge hits me work.