SWAP plan

After careful deliberation, I am going to make every attempt to complete the Timmel Fabrics SWAP. Since I will be in dire need of some transitional clothes once the baby is born and I go back to work. I don't anticipate having a lot of baby weight to lose, but I know I'm going to want comfortable clothes and then I plan on rejoining Weight Watchers to lose the rest of the weight I had to lose before I got pregnant. All in all, I'm expecting about 20lbs total. I have a lot of casual clothes, but not a lot of dressier work clothes.

So, this brings me to SWAP. With 11 garments, plus a couple of extras, I'll have a wardrobe that will be perfect for work, business trips and special events. Even though I won't be wearing any of these items during the fall or most of the winter, I have decided on a color scheme of black, gray, white and shades of purple. There are four reasons I chose this color scheme:

1. I'm a little bummed that I can't wear most of the gorgeous fall and winter styles that are coming out this year, so I'm going to wear them a season or two late (woman's prerogative).

2. My favorite maternity clothes (one top and two dresses) are in this color scheme and I plan on altering them to be wearable post-pregnancy, so they will be added to the final wardrobe to expand the number of options.

3. Purple and gray is one of my favorite color combinations and black and white are business wardrobe staples. Even though I can wear pretty much whatever I want to work, one of my plans for next year is to make a conscious effort to dress more professionally.

4. The majority of the wardrobe pieces (especially the bottom pieces) will go with many of the mis-matched tops I made for my early pregnancy and will allow more options for the transitional wardrobe.

Without further ado, here is my plan. I currently have one additional top and bottom piece than the SWAP rules call for, but this gives me a little bit of flexibility in decision making.



My chosen wardrobe pattern is Butterick 5101:


I chose this wardrobe pattern primarily because it was a knit wardrobe and knits are better for my post-pregnancy transitional plan. The reason I chose this over the many other knit wardrobe patterns was the fact that the top and skirt together look like a wrap dress, but will give so many additional options for a SWAP wardrobe. I like the wrap dress that comes with the pattern, but I really like the handkerchief hem of the skirt - my combination will be a black version of the all brown look on the far right of the picture.

As soon as all of my fabrics arrive, I'll post some photos of more detailed plans.