New Year, New Blog

I was not happy with the looks of my previous blog and found it very limiting, so I switched over and will now try blogger.


In 2010 I kept track of my sewing projects (well, at least 90% of them) and came up with the following statistics:
217 yards of fabric sewn
     32 dresses, 49 blouses/tees, 2 skirts, 1 purse, 3 vests 1 trouser, 8 jeans, 5 jackets
     Patterns used: 2 Butterick, 2 Collette, 2 New Look, 4 Hot Patterns, 7 Silhouette, 5 McCall, 26 Vogue, 5 Kwik Sew, 1 J. Sterns, 4 BWOF, 5 Jalie, 1 a la Mode, 8 Christine Jonson, 1 Burda, 7 Simplicity, and 2 Sewing Workshop!  
Wow, I’m not sure what’s more amazing, all the items sewn or the fact that I kept track!  For 2011, I think I’m going to keep track using an excel spreadsheet so I can do pie charts and graphs!

My first project of 2011 was finishing up the Vogue 8692, a Claire Shaeffer jacket.  This jacket took me the entire month of December to complete.  It has lots of couture techniques, most of which I learned in high school, and I enjoyed using them again!

The lapels and collar are a single layer which works well for this boiled wool fabric.  These are my first exposed bound buttonholes and the lining was all inserted by hand.  Something about hand sewing I find relaxing.   The jacket is cropped and the sleeves are 3/4 so the photos make it look boxier than it is.

After finishing up the jacket, I was looking for something simple to make and needed to start on a couple of baby quilts for 2 grand nieces.  One was born a few days before Christmas and the other is due in April. I purchased 2 kits from Connecting Threads and was able to piece the first quilt top in a few hours.  This quilt will be for my niece that was just born, Amina.  I ordered some backing fabric and will probably quilt it in a grid pattern.   Here’s a photo of the top.