Friday 11 February 2011

Happy New Year, lists galore (yeah, a bit late...)

Happy New Year to everyone, I hope you all had a lovely break over the Christmas period and had time to do plenty of sewing? And, yeah, this post has been sitting in my "drafts" folder for over a month now - where the hell does the time go?

It seems to be pretty popular in the blogosphere to review the previous year and make resolutions for the next, so I'm (sort of) going to do that too! I love following the crowd...

Well, 2010 was a pretty big year for me, mainly because of my move from London to Geneva. Ten months later and I'm still "settling in". When will that feeling go away? So many things about London I didn't realise I would miss so much until they weren't there any more - not least the fabric and haberdashery shops. Haberdashery's not so difficult to get hold of here, but the fabric appears to be INSANELY expensive. Like "44 CHF per metre for plain silk charmeuse" expensive (compared to £6 per metre equivalent on lovely lovely Goldhawk Road). JEEZ. On the positive side, however, I have gained a (almost) dedicated sewing room, plus the time to actually get down and sew. Delicious.

In terms of sewing, my output was depressingly low, but I think that was mainly due to getting stuff packed and unpacked and then getting settled here:

  1. Leopard and green Budapest dress
  2. Yellow knitted circle scarf (unfinished)
  3. Alphabet quilt for my nephew (unfinished)
Is that really all I made???? Well I guess that's motivation to have a slightly more impressive list next year!

I did also do a little Christmas sewing, I will post pictures in a separate post once the items have actually gone to their owners (what? I'm stretching out the excitement of the yuletide period for them).

As for resolutions, well I have some personal ones, which I'm not going to share with the, ooh, positively millions of people who are reading this (ahem), but the relevant ones for here are:

  1. Sew at least one item once a fortnight
  2. Set myself sewing projects each month
  3. Blog at least once a week

And progress so far? Mixed:

  1. I'm doing pretty well on this one actually! I'll post some of the stuff shortly that I've been producing.
  2. Only informally done so far. January was a bit vague, it was sort of sewing some basic jersey tops (boring, but needed), and sort of sewing a dress for my birthday. February is slightly more solid: sewing a dress for my birthday party (distinct from the birthday this year!). Again, posts to follow, honest. Which brings me onto...
  3. Er, yeah, well, this hasn't gone soooooo well! Room for improvement.

A bit more generally on number 2 (snigger), my wardrobe has been a bit in limbo since I stopped work when I moved over here and I want to get it sorted. I much prefer wearing a slightly dressier, "put together" look, which perfectly suited an office job, but isn't always the most appropriate thing to wear for my current life. I also often want to wear more comfy/casual clothes, but I also want to feel and look good, and the clothes I have that are comfy and casual generally don't really fit the bill for looking good...

Items planned:

  • Jersey T-shirt tops
  • Some sort of pretty tops that fit me (specific there, eh?)
  • Big cowl neck jumper (inspired by *ahem* Project Runway)
  • Warmer/sturdier revised version of green vintage jacket
  • Sweatshirt jacket
  • Winter coat (hmm, maybe a bit late for this season)
  • Wool skirt
  • Sweater dress
  • Jersey house dresses
  • Shirtdress
  • Birthday dress (1 of 2 done and worn)
  • - Wide(ish) leg trouser-jeans

Well, watch this space to see how I get on with this...