Habibis, we (Z and I and our families) had a big year this past year. My cousin and her husband and my brother and his wife had their first children, the first babies in the family in about 20 years. Z and I moved in together and got engaged. His brother got engaged, as did two of my cousins. The coming year will be even more exciting: we’ll have three family weddings, including our own, and the babies will continue to grow and learn. One of my cousins will complete his PhD. I think every year will be an exciting one for the next few years, as we all move into the next stages of our lives, finishing school, finding love, and starting families. Z and I have never been so happy, planning our wedding and the rest of our lives together.
That all means it’s going to be another busy year. When we got engaged, ours was the only wedding we had scheduled for 2016; now we’ve got four weddings and a fifth in 2017. This past year was also a busy one, with four weddings, two babies, and some major job upheaval, and at times I overcommitted and overextended myself. This coming year, with my own wedding to plan, I’m not counting on as much free sewing time. The experiences of last year led me to reevaluate some of my activities. I took the Handstitched class and didn’t finish all of the projects. I still have one unfinished EPP project floating around in my fabric cabinet. I also participated in the Stash Bee, which helped me meet new people but I think also taught me that I don’t necessarily work well that way. Making one block in someone else’s colors, taking me away from my own sewing, ended up being stressful at times. I think I work better and get into a rhythm when I’m making multiples of something, not just one, but many months I felt like I didn’t have time to make more than one. For 2016 I’m not going to sign up for any online classes (at least not in the beginning of the year) and I’m not in any online bees. Maybe I’ll return to the stash bee in 2017, but given my time constraints I know that won’t work for me this year.
I’d like to review my 2015 sewing goals. They turned out to be something of a moving target and this year I’m going to change them. Rather than a day of charity sewing a month, I’d like to commit myself to 12 charity projects. I’ve already got two doll quilts ready for quilting and two quilt tops in progress, an improv quilt that will hopefully be twin sized for my guild and the Hopkins Square Quilt of valor. Those will be my four projects for the beginning of the year, and we’ll go from there. Any charity project will count, large or small. If I exceed 12, great. If I struggle with it, at least it’ll be something.
I’m going to continue to try to sew my stash, but just like last year I’ve got plans for quilts that my stash can’t produce. I’ve already taken advantage of some New Years sales to supplement it. My December and January are going to both be incoming-heavy. I’d say so far I have a plan for 3/4 of my incoming fabric from December and January, but not necessarily a time table for all of it. I’d like to make more things for my home. On New Year’s Day I worked on some new pillow covers, but I’d also like to make a couple of quilts. (Z thinks we don’t need more quilts, but he’s wrong.) I’d love to make us a queen sized wedding quilt for our bed, but that seems a bit ambitious for this year.
I completely failed to do the Library Project this past year, but I didn’t get any new quilting books. (I have a wish list though…) I don’t think I made any quilts from any of my quilting books, although I had plans for at least one project that fell by the wayside. I may need to revisit this goal in 2017; it doesn’t look like 2016 will be the year for it.
That was quite a long post, with a lot of text, but these thoughts have been percolating in my mind for a while now and I wanted to share them. Tune in tomorrow for my December/yearly stash report, and on Wednesday I’ll begin sharing the two remaining handmade Christmas presents I made, both baby quilts.
Habibi Homemade 