The year is quickly coming to a close and I’ve been thinking a lot about my goals for the new year.  Perfect timing for another Top 5 Post!  This will be a longer post as  I wanted to get these all written up before the year is over!  You can see my Top 5 Hits post here.

Misses:

Most of my failures this year seem to be due to fabric choice or silhouette.  I love both my navy linen and dyed gauze pants but the fabrics just didn’t hold up well.  My Hawthorn peplum is too tight and just not a silhouette I enjoy wearing.  My Oonapalooza wrap pants are great as a muslin but fabric choice makes them just a bit too crazy for me to wear out and about.  And my Anne Klein Vogue top was also a poor fabric choice color wise.  It’s just too cutesy and bright, my other tops from this pattern are worn constantly.

images clockwise left-right: Hawthorn peplum, Anne Klein Vogue Top, Gauze Pants, Navy Linen Pants, Sheer Wrap Pants

Highlights of our year(family):

• It was a wonderful year!  My son graduated preschool and moved on to Kindergarten.  Can’t believe how quickly the time has gone.  My Nigel is 6 and Ami is 3.  My daughter and I had some lovely outings and girl time together, her first time getting some real one on one time with me. Nigel also started having almost weekly sleepovers over at my parents house with his cousins.
• We took a few mini vacations to Venice Beach and Nokomis, one of our favorite towns.  My husband and I celebrated our birthdays in February, they’re just two weeks apart, and our 8th anniversary in May!  We took a fun day cruise for Father’s Day in Ft. Myers with my husband’s parents and his sister and her kids.
• We had a fabulous time reconnecting with family in MN to celebrate the life of my grandmother who passed in September.  It was just what she would have wanted to have the family all together again!
•  My sister-in-law moved down here with her kids this summer so we have tons of family and cousins living nearby now.
• And probably the best change for our family was that my husband got a new job!  He’s so much happier and more relaxed now.  Just the change he needed.  That means we’ll most likely be moving over to Ft. Lauderdale in the summer, once Nigel is out of school.  Just have to see about selling our condo.
• We also spent many wonderful days spent at the beach, the Botanical Gardens, the Zoo, Edison-Ford Estates, the Pirate Fest and all the other places and activities things that make SWFL such a great place to live.

Reflections: 

•  One of the reasons I started this blog was that I needed to focus a bit more on myself and not just on motherhood.  Being a stay at home mom is so wonderful and very important to me but it’s really easy to lose your sense of identity when your focus is so devoted on your family and parenting.  That really hit home for me after losing my last baby to miscarriage at almost 12weeks a little over a year ago.  I was physically and emotionally drained and it took me quite awhile to recover.  My grandmother’s recent funeral was on the 1st anniversary of my loss which made it doubly hard.  Luckily I have lots of  family nearby and they’ve been so supportive and helpful.   Focusing on sewing and just creating has really been the best therapy for me.  I really love being part of the blogging sewing community, it’s just so supportive and upbeat.
•  I love how much my sewing has improved in just the last year.  I started sewing after my son was born about 6 years ago but really have only been consistently sewing the last year, once he started school and I had more time to myself.  If I look back at  my first makes the quality of my sewing now is just amazing.  I love how having a weekly practice of setting aside time to sew.
• Some of my favorite makes are my hand dyed pieces, they’re just so special to me.  I love how unique they are.  Plus the dyeing process itself reminds me of the printmaking process(my degree), the chemistry and science of making.  It just makes me happy!
• I still need to work on making my pieces mix and match a bit more.  So more simple silhouettes and solid colors.  I need to try to avoid too many crazy prints and focus on sewing complete looks for a consistent wardrobe.  I also need to think about fabric choice a bit more as that led to most of my sewing issues this year.
• On that note, I think the Wardrobe Architect series and Into Mind’s Workbook have probably had the biggest effect on my sewing this year. Planning out my makes with a predetermined silhouette and color scheme has made a huge difference in the wearability of my clothing.  You can find all my Wardrobe Architect posts here.

Goals:

I have some big goals for this year!  My youngest starts preschool next fall so I’m slowly getting ready to start-up a slow fashion business.  She’ll only be in school a half day so I’m planning on starting small with an Etsy shop selling hand dyed organic clothing.  I want the business to grow slowly and organically until I have my own little cottage industry.  So my plans for the rest of this year are to really focus on learning more patternmaking and drafting as well as how to grade patterns.  I already have my main silhouette’s worked out, it’s just a matter of producing my ideas. I also want to experiment more with dyeing this year.  We’re planning on moving to Ft. Lauderdale sometime this summer so hopefully I’ll soon have more studio space and a garden to work with.   Looking forward to more sewing learning opportunities on the other coast.

Currently I’m working on a bodice and sleeve block, starting on a new pair of jeans with some fabulous organic denim I found on Etsy, and planning on participating in Amy’s Watson bra sew-along over at Cloth Habit in January!

Hope 2014 has been as great for you!  What are your goals for 2015?  Looking forward to reading everyone else’s Top 5 Posts!  Wishing you all a fabulous New Year!