2017 Year in Review

2017 has been quite the year. I graduated from college in June and hit the ground (literally - I'm a gardener) working full time. My time off was suddenly my own. It didn't belong to homework; I could nap without regrets. So nap I did. I would come home from work and just sleep, get up long enough to have dinner and do barn chores, then back to bed. Suddenly, starting in September, every weekend and all my time off had something scheduled, and things were usually back-to-back. 

Honestly, I'm surprised that I got much crafting done at all. I didn't realize how much I managed to squeeze in with everything going on until I started going through pictures for this post. :P  

I started the year without much in the way of any grand project planning - just a few things that were stash-busting projects. All I knew is that I needed to whittle down my fabric stash. My rule was to only use materials that I already had on hand unless it was a notion or thread. That's it. For the most part, I was able to stick to that pretty well. :pats self on the back:

Starting in January, we had a ton of snow, freezing rain, or some sort of combo of the two. That left plenty of time for making things because I couldn't get to work or classes due to road conditions. Stressful for that reason alone. But I was able to get quite a bit of knitting and sewing in. ;) 

  Somehow I managed to squeeze in the red poppy dress in February. I've got some altering plans for this. I'm finding that I don't wear it all that much because it is harder to wear as a full dress. Maybe I'll just chop off the bodice and keep the skirt; that way, I can have more outfit options with it. We'll see what actually happens. 

 And that was it for a long time. I was playing catch-up with my classes. I didn't really sew anything until April with the tiny foxes dress. 

 To continue the stash-busting theme, I did a strawberry dress for my sister in July. This is part 2 of 3 for my fruit dress collection. There was the lemon dress for one sister, this dress for the other sister. Next up, is a blueberry dress for myself. It was started, but there were kinks in the pattern that I needed to work out. I ran out of berry dress steam, and it was thrown into the UFO pile. 

 The next big project that I managed to squeeze in was my first cosplay - the Chewbacca circle skirt. I had plans to get the rest of the ensemble put together for comic con, but I just didn't have the time. All I cared about was that it was easy to wear and a subtle enough reference that people had to be paying attention to catch it. ;) 

  After comic con, I wanted to make a new dress for a dance that was less than 2 weeks later. Somehow a Regency dress was finished in that time. There's some things I want to add to the dress, but it was wearable for the event. 

The same weekend of comic con marked the beginning of the craft fair season. This year, I was able to fit in 4. I learned quite a bit at these events - the biggest being what to look for when scoping out potential markets and making sure that they are well publicized.

 For the first few markets that I did, I was able to get by with what I already had in stock. By the last market, I realized that I needed to have some more Christmas-y things as well, so I threw together what I could in time for the event. I was literally putting in the last stitch during a lull while I was sitting in my booth. 

After the last bazaar, I was able to dive back into paper piecing with a tote for a friend! 

 After the bag came the Christmas sewing craziness. No matter how much I try, I always end up sewing things on Christmas Adam and Eve. Everyone gets pj's. They know that. The surprise is the print. I get the fabric on Black Friday with the intention of working on it through the month, but that never happens. :P 

  After the Christmas craziness, comes the apparently annual tradition with my friend. We wander through a cute downtown (because it's middle ground for us and there's a fabric shop). I've decided that it was my annual trip there, so it was time to stock up. I have no self-control. Maybe a year of fabric-purchasing restraint was a good thing. Now I should be well set for a long while. Since I'm done with school, I have free time (well, sort of), and I have a list of things to sew before the spring planting craze. And I'm desperately needing to restock my inventory for the next bazaar season. 

Until next time! 

SG