I KNOW. Sewing plan posts stink. I won’t be offended if you skip it. But whereas other people’s sewing plans mostly bore me to tears, I find my own endlessly fascinating. I don’t expect you to, though.
1. There will be clothes! Like finishing that leather pencil skirt, and the suit(s), and a couple more blouses for work.
2. There also will be clothes for Frances! She grew out of her raincoat, and also she’s been bugging me for a mini duffel bag. So I’ll start there.
3. There will be quilts! I want to make a quilt for my own room this year. I’ve picked out the Heaven & Earth pattern from Material Obsessions 2, for which I can find no decent photo online. But it is full of colour and contrast and I love it. It’s going to take a while to find some good fat quarters for it, though, so it’s likely to take most of the year. I’m also going to finish that Farmer’s Wife quilt. Slowly.
4. There will be embroidery! Last year I had a loose schedule, where I did handwork during the week and machine sewing on weekends, when I had bigger blocks of time. I’m going to get back into that, and I’m going to start by sewing up an embroidered beetle on weeknights from this mouth-watering book. (I don’t actually recommend eating the book. Or the beetles, for that matter.) There are many new and exciting embroidery books in my life right now, and I am all stocked up with projects and mojo.
5. There will be embroidery on clothes! I have some ideas. For now I’ll tuck them away safely. There will also be embroidery on accessories.
As an aside, do any of you have any theories about why more sewing bloggers don’t do this? It’s such a fun and easy way to make something that’s really unique and has personality, and well done it is so lovely, and it involves a lot of the same needles and threads sewists already use to make the clothes anyway. Why not add a little embellishment? Unlike a hand-rolled hem, it’s even visible.
6. There will be blogging about some, but not all, of this! Don’t get used to this frequency, though.
7. There will be organization! Inspired by an Online Friend Who Shall Remain Nameless but Possibly Volunteer to Out Herself, I have created an excel spreadsheet to document all of my sewing patterns, fabric, and ongoing projects. It seemed like a good idea at the time … anyway. Apparently, after sorting out the patterns Frances has outgrown and the fabric scraps I’ve finally accepted will never be made into anything, I have just under 50 patterns and about 80 separate pieces of usable fabric, 2/3 of which is quilting cotton (for quilts, people). Why do you care? You don’t! I know. But these meaningless statistics took a good chunk of a Saturday afternoon to generate, and dammit, if I can’t monetize it, at least I will put it somewhere on the blog.
No, wait: I can now keep track of what projects are going to use which patterns and fabrics, and identify where there are actual gaps, as opposed to shopping on a whim and a prayer. That is the plan, anyway. And it’s fairly important because, sometime between the roof post and the end of the year, my furnace broke down and needed to be replaced. (In a Canadian winter, Dear Readers, a functioning furnace is not a luxury.)
8. I will participate in MMM! But don’t worry, I will never have the time or interest to document what I wear every day, so there is no risk whatsoever of having a 30-day What I Made and Wore post extravaganza.
9. It’s going to be FUN!
Because if your hobbies aren’t fun, you’re doing it wrong.
10. And lastly, there will be exclamation points!
Zoopolis 
Haha, the Online Friend Who Shall Remain Nameless but Possibly Volunteer to Out Herself says that you are the first of two people who she’s converted to the Cult of Excel this year! Her efforts as a High Priestess of the Temple of Spreadsheets have not been in vain!
Must have been all those sacrificed kittens. 😉
I’m pumped for your exclamation-point-filled 2015. 😉 And your ‘broidered beetles, good grief. Will you treat them more like art pieces or apply them to a garment? I like looking at embroidery and made an uneducated attempt at it last year, but I tend to think of it as something I’ll do “later” when I have more time.
I’m not sure yet. I”m going to start with a standalone beetle to work out some kinks, put it in a frame or on a cushion or something, and then see where I go with it. I could totally see some cool beetles on some clothes, if I can do them well enough.
Did you see the pictures of her projects, though? Aren’t they beautiful?
i kind of want to make that farmer’s wife quilt too. i don’t know why i’m so drawn to projects that other people say are impossible. that’s why i made the weekender bag, &…it really wasn’t that difficult. i am not great at point-matching though, so the farmer’s wife quilt may be more challenging.
i like the idea of embroidering & have been wanting to do it myself. i’m a complete novice though, so my hesitations come from not wanting to royally fuck up a project that would have been fine if i’d just left it alone. & some people who sew REALLY hate hand-sewing & will go to the ends of the earth to avoid it. maybe that’s why there’s not more embroidery?
i kind of like people’s sewing plans for the year. it’s always interesting to see how ambitious people get.
The Farmer’s Wife quilt book is not so bad. What I did was print out all the templates, measure them, then just cut to the measurements. And use a very scant 1/4″ seam allowance; she doesn’t account for turn of cloth at all. Otherwise I’ve found that they work pretty well. Persnickety but not broken.
And point-matching is still a challenge for me. But I’ve learned that mismatched points look much more glaring in a single block than when you put them together, so there’s that.
I can totally see why people who avoid any hand-stitching whatsoever and will do whatever it takes to do a machine equivalent would not be keen on embroidery. But for the ones who will hand-roll a six-foot skirt hem, or pad-stitch a blazer, you know, why not? It seems like such a natural overlap at least some of the time. And I think you should pick up embroidery for sure. 😀 Then we can be co-tea drinking, paper-piecing, farmers’ wife quilt sewing, handmade clothes wearing AND embroidering old ladies in front of a fireplace somewhere.
I for one enjoy all things Andrea!! I am your biggest fangirl!! I like!!! Too!!!
If you look at japanese sewing blogs they do a lot of embroidery.
Love all the exclamation points. 😉
Thanks, Laura. Right back at you. And I will look up some japanese sewing blogs. Do you have any recommendations?
Oh my gosh. You are too organized. I might alter a dress for which I’m now too fat or I may just stop binge eating caramels and hope for the best. Other than that, I’ll be a spectator!
I cannot for the life of me see you as having gained any weight whatsoever. But hopefully it’s happiness weight. 🙂
Embroidery is one of those things I always get sper enthusiastic about… Then never do. I agree though, it’s odd that it’s not more popular in the SBC
That should be super, not sper