Big Sewing Plans
If someone asks me about my ideal weekend, I might answer that I would like to sew all day. Well, maybe not really sew all day! One also needs to cut fabrics or pin things together from time to time if one wants to sew. But in general, I always have a long list of sewing projects. My sewing plans for 2020 were especially extensive. So my weekends usually involve some sewing time!
My Sewing Plans for 2020
While I spent a lot of time in November and December 2019 finishing Christmas presents (mostly involving patchwork or quilting), my plan for 2020 was to focus on making clothes. I started making trousers in the fall and wanted to focus on making tops and dresses in 2020 to have new outfits for work. This year was supposed to be my ‘dressmaking year’.
I had already purchased many patterns to sew clothes and I have a list in Excel of patterns that I still want to purchase. I prefer to use digital patterns that I can print and cut myself. This makes the pattern-making part much faster than if you have to copy from a paper pattern.
The fabric collection for clothes fabric is also quite extensive now. Not as extensive as the patchwork fabric collection, but as I wrote before, I love everything fabric. So it is definitely growing as well.
To have a better overview of my sewing plans, I even started a ‘sewing journal’ in 2020. I always wanted to note down what mistakes I made and what needed to be improved. Lovely idea, but the moment I decided to use this only for clothes making, the idea became obsolete. In the end, I spent much more time making quilts in 2020 than making clothes. And in fact, even much more time making quilts than ever before.
Sewing T-Shirt after T-Shirt
In January 2020 I started off focusing on sewing with jerseys for the first time in my life. I am not such a big fan of jersey fabrics. I feel they are too warm for the Gulf Region. Usually, I also do not wear T-shirts very often – except for the gym maybe. So me spending almost a month sewing t-shirts is kind of funny. But at the end of January, I had nine different shirts.
I bought amazing jersey fabrics at the ‘Königreich der Stoffe’ (in English: ‘Kingdom of Fabrics’) during my Christmas break. This is an online fabric store whose storehouse is open to shoppers. And this storehouse happens to be in the neighboring village from my parent’s house. What a nice coincidence!
But why this sudden interest in T-shirts? It is not that I started loving t-shirts, but I had bought Kira Denecke’s book “Oberteile nähen” (in English: ‘Sewing Tops’). My plan was to use this book to learn how to make different blouses and tops. And being the person I am, I wanted to sew all 16 tops of the four chapters one by one. I started with the chapter on t-shirts and actually also only finished this chapter so far. 🙂
And it turned out that all these t-shirts became quite useful during our home office and lockdown phase. I was wearing them almost every week while working from home during the last months. Who would have thought so?! 🙂
Refocus on Patchwork & Quilting
In February my sewing plans changed. I started refocusing on my patchwork and quilting projects. I think there are two main reasons for this unplanned shift back to patchwork.
My lovely husband had given me two books on modern quilts for Christmas. And not only had he gotten me the books, but he had also already chosen which quilts he would like to have for himself. 🙂 One is ‘Simple Geometric Quilt Patterns’ by Laura Preston from Vacilando Quilting Co. and the other one is ‘Southwestern Modern’ by Kristi Schroeder from Initial K Studio. Little had he known that I had followed Kristi Schroeder on Instagram for some time already. So I was intrigued to start making every quilt from the book as well! 🙂- And because of the new routine of working from home, it was suddenly not so urgent anymore to make clothes suitable for the office. I could sit with my T-shirts à la Kira Denecke at the desk and do my work without dressing up.
My lovely husband had given me two books on modern quilts for Christmas. And not only had he gotten me the books, but he had also already chosen which quilts he would like to have for himself. 🙂 One is ‘Simple Geometric Quilt Patterns’ by Laura Preston from Thus I started to make quilts again. And not only did I decide to make quilts, but I also decided to make one quilt per month for 2020!
So far so good! Now at the beginning of September, I have made seven quilts plus several quilted cushions that could actually count as quilt no 8. But as we are now moving slowly into the post-lock-down phase, I will need to change my sewing plans again. After all, I need clothes for going to the office.
Changing back to Making Clothes?
This would mean that I need to refocus on making clothes instead of making quilts. Most probably this shift is going to happen within the next two months. I will start standing in front of the wardrobe in the morning not knowing what to wear. But before this happens I would like to make one more quilt!
What is new about it, you might ask? After all, she already made eight this year!
This will be the first time that I will share my work-in-progress properly. This is absolutely new to me. Usually, I share photos of finished projects or projects that will definitely be finished within the next days or weeks. I just started using Instagram and Facebook stories to let everyone see what I am working on right now. This will put some pressure on me. I will have to finish the project and it should not end up as a UFO* somewhere in the closet. 🙂
So, if you do not follow me on Instagram and Facebook already, like Me + My Craftroom now to stay in the loop of what will happen with these beauties from Art Gallery Fabrics. Looking forward to hearing your feedback and ideas!
* Quilters call ‘unfinished objects’ (or projects) UFOs. I have quite a few of those in my closet at the moment.
You May Also Like
That Time Patchwork Saved My Life
Lolwa’s Cushion Workshop & Pattern
