My Creative Plans for 2021

Last week I shared my 2020 review of my creative projects with you. This week’s post I want to use to write about what I plan creatively for the upcoming year. It is usually a very intuitive process that follows naturally on reviewing the different creative categories I set for myself. When I write about my last projects automatically I think about new ones and how to move on from there.

For writing about my 2020 creative project plans I will use the same eight categories. These are my blog, patchwork & quilting, fashion design & sewing clothes, Islamic patterns, surface pattern design, calligraphy & lettering, linocut & printmaking, and last (and most probably in this case also least) creative writing.

Of course, all of these topics will be influenced by the fact that I am 22 weeks pregnant. So the little gentleman is already very much affecting my creative project planning as well… 

Bringing All Creative Projects Together: My Blog

The Me + My Craftroom blog is somehow the element that holds all my other interests together. I very much enjoy writing blog posts and have a long list of projects and ideas to write about. So, I definitely want to go on posting regularly. During the last months, I have been very quiet, but also from next week onwards, the monthly newsletter will come back.

And my plans for Me + My Craftroom are to become more professional. In December I had my first fabric labels made after I had already improvised a few business cards and paper labels in August. Recently, I also started a Me + My Craftroom YouTube channel and I plan to produce more video content about my creative processes as well. So, stay tuned for new and interesting content!

Patchwork & Quilting

The year 2020 was a very busy year for patchwork and quilting. I managed to realize a monthly project and I want to proceed in a similar way in 2021: one quilt project per month. These projects can be smaller or bigger, i.e. complete quilts or cushion covers.

One element that will be very prevalent in 2021 are baby quilts and also quilting with flannel fabric. The baby quilts of course because I am pregnant, but also because I have ten friends and family members around me who are also pregnant. So, I kind of plan to make an individual baby quilt for each of these babies. I better hurry up to finish these before I spend all my ‘patchwork time’ looking after my very own baby! 🙂

Flannel seems to have been the hit this winter season. I found so many beautiful flannel prints online and ordered quite a few to make quilts. As I never made a flannel quilt this will be one of my new patchwork-related projects for 2021 as well. 

Fashion Design & Sewing Clothes

My sewing plans have been completely messed up by the fact that I am pregnant. Most probably I will write about this more in detail in next week’s post. Being pregnant changed my sewing priorities in terms of clothes in two new directions: maternity clothes and baby clothes. So there will be a lot of updates on these topics during the next months. Both topics that I started exploring only recently.

Islamic Patterns

In terms of Islamic patterns – geometric and biomorphic – I will proceed to take online courses as long as they are offered by my various teachers. I wrote about this topic very little on the blog so far but will make sure to feature this topic more often in 2021. But, I should focus more on the biomorphic patterns. Geometric ones are usually very easy for me, but biomorphic ones are more challenging.

Another aspect in this context is how to transfer these patterns into quilts. I explored the foundation paper piecing method with my Islamic geometric pillows last summer. And in December I tried out to use English paper piecing for making an Islamic geometric coaster. Both will be explored further in 2021! There are so many nice Islamic patterns that would look simply stunning as a quilt as well! 🙂

Surface Pattern Design

This should have been actually my main topic in 2020, but I ended up doing so many other things on the side that I could not concentrate on designing repeat patterns as I wanted. But I started on a path that I want to proceed within 2021. So these are the goals I set in this context.

• Both my memberships in Bonnie Christine‘s Flourish and Bärbel Dressler‘s new membership on historic pattern styles should be used more intensively. I want to become more active in making patterns and participating in the challenges and competitions they offer. I am not so sure yet if should participate in this year’s Immersion Course again. I will decide this next month most probably.
• The Make It in Design Winter School already starts about a week from now. I signed up for the two remaining tracks. The third track I won during the Summer School in August )I wrote about this in my blog post ‘When Inspiration Strikes’). This year I would like to submit one pattern for one of the two design briefs per track.
• Also, the #100dayproject starts much earlier this year: on 31st January 2021. This new timing is actually not too bad for me as it finished on 10th May already. This might give me a chance to participate until the end and finish it before the little gentleman arrives.
• Furthermore, I think I should look more into Spoonflower as well and start using their service to print my own fabrics. This January there is a sketching challenge by Spoonflower with daily prompts. But so far I did not manage to sketch a single day. 😉

My other Creative Projects

And then there are all my other creative projects, i.e. calligraphy & lettering, linocut & printmaking, and creative writing. They haven’t been so much a priority in 2020 and I think it will be similar in 2021. Only printmaking might come up here and there. I am still dying fabric scraps whenever I have some fruit peel that is good for dying. So, I am still experimenting in this regard.

But I will not put any pressure on myself regarding this and make big plans. I guess I will have my hands full with the above creative plans… and the little one of course!

How about you? What are your (creative) plans for 2021? Please share them with me in the comment section below.