Move Over, 2015! Welcome, 2016!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I hope everyone had a happy and safe celebration. My New Year’s Eve was great. Maybe great for a 90-year-old, but great nonetheless.

We ate at our favorite sushi restaurant, Ginza, where the chef gave us free takoyaki (octopus balls… yum!). We seriously go once a week there… sometimes twice a week, so the owners and staff know us pretty well. It’s the best sushi I’ve had outside of Japan – HANDS DOWN. You would never think that you would find a great sushi place in the desert, but there it is! The fish is super fresh and the flavors range from super authentic Japanese to Japanese/Mexican fusion. Happiness all around.

After our sushi excursion, we came home to settle down. I called my friends back in New Orleans – we have a tradition where they call me at midnight NOLA time and scream drunkedly into the phone to wish me a happy new year, which I’m usually half asleep for… so this year I beat them to the punch and called at 9:00 their time before people were drunk, so we got to have real conversations!! I then turned off my phone and passed out at 9:00 Tucson time. 12 hours later, I’m awake and have a very happy, drunken voicemail from my NOLA friends from midnight. I love you guys. ❤

I would have liked to stay awake for midnight, but after waking up at 5:00 am and working a full, exhausting day at work, I could barely keep my eyes open after dinner. Yes, I am old.

Anyway, ’tis the time for reflections and planning, so here we go!

My top 5 sewing hits of 2015:

In no particular order…

1. This was definitely the Year of the Moneta. I made 6 (1 gifted) and I wear the heck out of these! I have plans for more in the future – especially with more print mixing and matching. They work well for frolicking on the weekends AND for our business-casual office. Moneta, I love you.
2. My comic Pneuma Tank gets a lot of wear at the gym… whenever I decide to go, that is. It’s perfect for the sweltering summers here AND it’s unique.
3. My springy-Frankenpattern dress was an experiment – both with the fabric (scuba knit!) and with mixing two patterns. The top is from a Butterick pattern and the bottom is from the Sewaholic Cambie. My seams ended up matching and this is another great dress to wear to work.
4. You know I have to throw in my pretty girly fancy dress! I’m pleased with how the fabric mixing turned out and I learned to embrace the skirt of poofiness.
5. And of course, my Khaleesi costume! I used mostly scrap fabric for this that was already in my stash and I’m super happy with how “authentic” I look and feel in this. Now if only there were more occasions to dress like the Mother of Dragons…

There are definitely more projects that could have made this list, but I’m limited to 5! I count that as a very successful sewing year.

Now onto….

My top 5 sewing misses of 2015:

1. My Vogue shirt of doom has only been worn twice, begrudgingly. I messed up with the sizing and this thing cuts into my armpits. Sadly, this will go into the donation pile soon.
2. I love my Katniss cowl neck from The Hunger Games, but I can’t figure out where else to wear this outside of a movie premier. I did wear it to see the last Mockingjay movie… so its purpose is fulfilled. I’m going to hold onto it for a while to see if I can get creative enough with my outfits to make this thing work.
3. Ugh, THIS thing… people compliment me on it when I wear it, but this Cynthia Rowley top just doesn’t feel right to me. It’s just a poor choice of fabric.
4. WHAT?! A Pneuma Tank in both the hits AND misses? This one works well enough, but it was my first go with the pattern and I sized an XS to a S for it. I should have stuck with an XS for the whole thing since it bags a little weird. It’s probably unnoticeable to most people, but you know how we sewists get with our makes…
5. I have mixed feelings about this dress. I know it’s super cool that I made it from the Khaleesi costume pattern and that fabric is TO DIE FOR, but I totally derped when sewing it and forgot to stay-stitch the neckline. After some wear, the neckline stretches out and I have to watch out so I don’t flash anyone. Sigh.

Next up…

Reflections

It looks like I’ve made about 40 things, some blogged, some unblogged. So that’s almost an item a week! Almost…

Since the addition of Freya (my serger) to my sewing family, I feel like my projects are completed much faster. I am also super happy with how professional they look on the inside, so I’m not as embarrassed to make things for others, now.

I repeated a lot of patterns this past year, namely the Moneta, Hudson Pants, Pneuma Tank, and Plantain. Hey, when you find something that works, stick with it!

Goals

I’m hesitant to make sewing goals for myself this year since I don’t know what the year holds in store for me. So far it’s looking like my free time and energy will go into working overtime at work (we’re starting Monday with mandatory OT… gotta love it!), but here’s hoping it won’t be too bad.

I know every year I say I will make the Sewaholic Thurlow Trousers… so I won’t guarantee that will happen this year, but I DO want to bust out some pants! I have the Ginger Jeans pattern, too and just bought the Jedediah Pants for DD, so I have to attempt pants with a fly front this year!

I’m starting out the year with some un-selfish sewing, so hopefully I can continue that a little more throughout the year. I’m making some Pneuma Tanks for my mom for her birthday next week (don’t worry, she knows so I’m not ruining the surprise!) and want to make DD a Paxson sweatshirt from Seamwork magazine for our upcoming trip to Japan.

OH YEAH… so we’re going to Japan!!! I’m so flipping excited I can hardly contain myself! I can’t wait to see the friends I made during my year doing the JET Program and do some Japanese fabric shopping. DD also wants to try to make a trip to Munich for Oktoberfest, so it’s looking like 2016 will be a year of international travel. HECK YES. That overtime money will come in handy for sure. 🙂

As far as blogging goals go – I’m trying not to stress myself out with POSTING. EVERY. WEEK.  I’ll post as I feel necessary, which will still be pretty often – so no worries, I’m not going anywhere! I also need to focus on having different types of posts other than “HEY LOOK I MADE THIS.” I’ve had a couple of suggestions already, but if you’d like to see something different on here, please let me know in the comments! This blog is as much for you as it is for me, so let’s collaborate!

In conclusion, this past year had its ups and downs. The downs seemed to outweigh the ups (lots of deaths – surgeries – stress – etc.), so I’m hoping 2016 will flip-flop that and have more ups than downs! I look forward to more inspiration from the wide world of lovely sewing bloggers and hope that I can inspire people back. Cheers to 2016!

XOXO,

-RED