I’ve officially decided that 2016 will be known as “The Year of Making for Me.” I’m going to keep swaps and gifts to a minimum and focus on my own household. I know the list below will evolve and change but at the moment, here’s what I’m hoping to get done this year — and only one of these items will leave my household!
Finish a baby quilt. This is my current work in progress, and with any luck I’ll get it finished by mid-February. It will be a gift, but after that it’ll be full steam ahead on making for me and my family.
Make (another) quilt for Emma. The triangle quilt I made for her first birthday in 2013 looks downright comical on her twin-sized bed because, duh, it’s a baby quilt. I want to make her a bed-sized quilt and I’m thinking something relatively simple and geometric like this or this. I also plan to let her pick a few of the fabrics…but from a larger group that I select, because honestly I don’t want to make a novelty quilt full of princess prints.
Make a quilt for Charlotte. Because she needs one too! No plans for this one yet, except that it’ll be baby sized.
Finish my kaleidoscope mini. I lost steam on this one in the fall, but I definitely want to finish it. The wall above the bed in our master bedroom has been bare ever since we moved in, and I think this will be the perfect thing to hang there!
Make a Snow White dress for Emma. I had planned to do this in December and had to give up the ghost (and bought a Sleeping Beauty dress online instead). But I have all the fabric and the pattern and her old Snow White dress is still ripped…so this is definitely still on the agenda.
Make a Sailor top for me. I’ve been eyeing this pattern for several months as a good way to give garment sewing another try. It looks fairly simple and calls for woven fabric (as opposed to knits, which I haven’t worked with very much). With the right print choice, I could easily wear this kind of top to work! I’m hoping to get this sewn in March as a little birthday present to myself.
Sew a Maker’s Tote for me. I bought this pattern as soon as it came out, since I immediately knew I’d want one for myself. Anna Graham is probably my favorite pattern maker at the moment. She doesn’t do many quilts, but I love all of her bags and have already made several myself.
The items above are all one-time projects. I also have a few ongoing things to tackle:
Participate in the Mighty Lucky club. I signed up for this in December, excited by the promise that it will challenge my quilting design muscles. I also like the idea of having a small, manageable project to do each month. January’s challenge involves bias tape so I’m planning to have some fun with that later this week.
Make Charlotte’s stocking. And do it in time for Christmas, of course. I bought a kit to make her a cross stitched stocking similar to Emma’s. I haven’t started it yet, but need to get it underway soon because if Emma’s was any indication, it will take me the whole year to complete.
Make progress on my Passacaglia quilt. I don’t think I’ve touched it at all since Charlotte was born, for obvious reasons, but I’d like to get back to it little by little. I certainly won’t finish it in 2016, but hopefully I can get a few more rosettes done.