The Late Night Sewist

Happy New Year everyone!

I know I am kind of late with this, but I have a bunch of good reasons for it and nevertheless, I truly hope the new year will be better than the one that passed!

Whoever has followed this blog for a while probably can guess that I personally had a rough year and that part of it is quite closely related to the suffocating crisis in Europe which is affecting almost everyone, so let’s hope the new year will bring some relief to all of us.

When I  look back at the year sewing-wise, it definitely was a productive one and I took my hobby to a new level by starting this blog, getting more active in burdastyle.com sewing community, finally buying a dressmaker’s mannequin (plus a couple of books) and learning a lot with each project. I am especially proud of learning to sew a professional looking front fly and Rigilene-boned bodice. Also, I made a few garments to other people, which is totally new to me, but has given me lots of confidence.

Blogging has brought me absolutely unexpectedly loads of positive energy, thanks to the nice comments from readers and also friends in real life. A big thank you to all of you!

I am not very good at keeping strict goals, so I just hope to have enough time to sew in the new year. No new year resolutions!

During the holidays I was two weeks off from work and planned to sew and trace several patterns while visiting my parents. The result was close to zero (so much about the goals!), because I accidentally left some fabrics behind when packing hurriedly in the morning after the Christmas party with colleagues and I only managed to trace a few patterns.

Nevertheless, I had a great time because my fiance from Greece was visiting and we spent 10 wonderful days in my native Tartu and current hometown Haapsalu.

For us in Estonia and other Northern countries it is so usual, but for my fiance it was the first time to see frozen sea, and he couldn’t really believe his ears that in winter, if the cold has lasted for quite some time, we have some official ice roads open so that it is possible to go to some islands by car on ice, instead of taking the boat.

Now, talking about sewing, I made some little investments.

I ordered several McCall’s patterns, when they were on 0.99$ sale on sewingpatterns.com and one Vogue, plus “Tailoring: The Classic Guide to Sewing the Perfect Jacket” from amazon.co.uk and also wrote to Santa Claus to bring me “‘Home Sewn”‘, a book by New Zealand Fashion Museum. Santa Claus ordered it from Papercut Patterns, taking advantage of their worldwide free shipping offer just before Christmas. Both books have yet to arrive, but it should be any time soon and I am very excited.

The patterns I ordered:

McCall’s 6460

McCall’s 6243

McCall’s 6565

McCall’s 6321

McCall’s 6319

McCall’s 6471

Vogue 8849, of which I think it is best to show the technical drawings.

I am not a systematic sewer, so there is a high chance that I will not use some of these new patterns, but at the moment I love them all and hope that eventually I would turn most of them into garments.

Happy sewing in 2013!