Sewing With A PLan (SWAP)

Swap is a concept that has been around for a couple of years. I read about swap was from Julie Culshaw's website sometime in 2006 or 2007. After reading Julie's article I started buying stitchers magazine on E-bay; and I was able to read and see more of how the swap concepts work. I have been planning to swap from 2006-2010 without success; I made a plan, choose patterns, fabrics, and created a design board. After all that planning, I felt overwhelm, anxious and abandon the whole idea. Every fall I went through this exercise and finally last fall I decided that SWAP was no longer important and that I was going to sew whatever I wanted, no rules. The fabulous Sheila-CTK who has a relaxed, matter of fact attitude has encouraged me and shared her knowledge and experience. This has helped me to refocus and re-organize how I sew and what I sew. The results were evident in the last three post (carnival of skirts and simplicity 1873- Cynthia Rawley). Finally, I realize that the reason why my attempts of SWAP was not succesful in the past was because I only had one TNT (skirt) pattern, all the other patterns I choose required too many alterations and this took so much of my time. Also, I did not have all required notions for the fabrics I choose etc. I now have several TNTs (skirt, dress, jacket). This brings me to my last point, there is a SWAP over at Sticher's Guild that starts December 26,2012 and ends April 30, 2013. There are three options for a total of  9 to 11 garments including tops, bottoms, dressess etc. This equals 2 garments a month. If you are interested head over to Stitcher's Guild.
I will not be joining SWAP swe along, instead I will be using the concept to add needed pieces to my wardrobe.