Hard to believe it's coming up 2023... |
On this occasion, I've got random notes at best. (As I piece this all
together, forgive me if the result turns out to be less than cohesive!)
'Til next (year)...
Usually, as the calendar is about to change over, I'll give myself
permission to deviate from the subject of sewing and pontificate on major
issues of the moment. This year, those issues have just been so wearying
that I am frankly quite happy not to mention them. The world is a mess and
the loudest voices are making it messier. Having never been one to put my
head in the sand — figuratively speaking — I find myself increasingly
envious of ostriches these days.
So I opt to focus on my sewing journey and where it's taken me. As I
complete year ten of my renewed passion for sewing, what does the road
travelled look like?
Not only that, the blogging part of this adventure has returned more back
to me than I ever imagined it would. The process has yielded unexpected
lessons and rewards both big and small.
I have a vivid memory of the decision to start this little endeavour.
Knowing — or maybe not knowing — the failure/success rate of new
blogs, it was a bit of a scary commitment. On the other hand, there was
also the distinct possibility that no one would even be aware of my blog
in the first year or so to miss it if it didn't succeed. (Failure in
isolation; I could handle that.)
But the desire to share the sewing adventure that I had already
embarked upon in the year previous — i.e, 2012, ten years ago —
convinced me to go for it. Not only had I reconnected with a hobby
that used to be an important part of my life, it had already led
me to a surprising level of creativity.
I like to call it being creative outside of the box, and it
was something that I really wanted to convey to fellow sewers. It
first happened to me in the summer of 2013, several months before
this blog was born.
Three of the test bags behind the Make it Yours Bag... |
I ended up designing a pattern and writing up a tutorial for a
simple yet versatile purse, which ultimately became my
Make it Yours Bag. By that time, I had already sewn up several bags and — tapping
into my skills as a tech writer and documentation designer — found
that it was a natural progression for me to develop a pattern of
my own. Needless to say, when I started sewing again, this was
not something that I saw on the horizon.
So a secondary objective for starting the blog was for it to
assist with selling that pattern. I knew that the (old)
Craftsy marketplace was the ideal place to sell
from, but having an online presence to establish an identity for
myself was a necessary stepping stone. Because — to reiterate my
original focus — my aim wasn't just to sell a pattern; I wanted to
document the ongoing journey of my coming back to sewing, sharing
lessons along the way and discovering innovative means to put it
all into practice.
That's been my motivation for the past decade. Luckily, when I
started this blog in late 2013, I already had a year of that
journey under my belt, so I wasn't stuck thinking about what to
write on a weekly basis.
Here's the project that started it all, the thing that I dropped
needle into fabric on October 28, 2012 to do some real sewing for
the first time in years: the Professional Tote.
The project that started this adventure: the Professional Tote... |
Obviously, this pattern is fairly old, but I still see
references to it in 2022, so for a variety of reasons, it
remains popular. Personally, I'm thankful for it having been
created, because if not, my friend in BC would not have taken a
class to make the bag, in which case, I would never have seen it
and this blog would literally not exist. (Aren't some cases of
cause and effect
just so totally mind-blowing??)
In hindsight, I'm also grateful for the lessons learned from
making this bag. (Learned them early, too, as described in
this post.) How many times have you been drawn to a project that someone
has made and instantly say,
I must make this for myself! And then you dive right into
it without further thought.
It takes patience — and a willingness to delay gratification —
to stop and ask oneself,
how best can I make this to fit my needs? Let's just say
that while I appreciated the making of the
Professional Tote at that time in my life (it felt like
an accomplishment as it's not exactly an easy pattern with which
to slide back into sewing after decades away), the bag itself is
not really suited to my needs. After using it once or twice,
it's since become a container for my various handmade travel
items. (You can see glimpses of my
Yahtzee wallet,
travel notebook, and
sleep mask
in the photo above.)
The major lesson learned was that for most of my future bag
projects, I would take the time to think about how to change
them to make them fit my preferences. (Or to fit the
availability of materials, which was always an ongoing challenge
for me because I usually didn't have just the right amount of
"whatever" on hand.) Over the years, I've tagged seventeen blog
posts with the label "customizing patterns", which speak to the subject of doing just that. I hope to
have demonstrated that it's not difficult to do and advantageous
to attempt.
And what about when something you want to sew doesn't exist as a
pattern at all? Have I inspired any of you to put on your most
powerful thinking caps to achieve your own
MyTie? I'm not saying to make a similar bag out of a tie, but to come
up with a solution when you can't find one anywhere else. When I
first saw these little bags (check out posts labelled "the tie project"), no one was selling a pattern to make them. Therefore, I had
to come up with my own.
It turned out to be a major win-win, since my desire to make one
was universally understood: it was a way to memorialize my late
father. Turns out there are a lot of people who think converting a
tie into a small purse or clutch is an ideal way to remember the
special men in our lives.
Successfully "copying" a desktop organizer... |
Ironically, my dad's only remaining neck tie never did get
transformed into a mini bag, but the whole of my efforts to
develop and release that pattern — which covered a rather intense
three month period in 2014 — was in honour of him. (I believe I
made six MyTies during that time, the most I've ever made
of any one thing.)
I repeated this immensely satisfying process of making something
strictly from sight when I sewed up this
desktop caddy/organizer in 2017. (I've thought several times about writing it up as a
pattern for sale, but I truly think that my interest in developing
patterns has waned.)
Looking further along the road travelled upon, a major signpost
would have to be the one that marked an unforeseen detour into
the world of
fabric design.
For someone who wrote in late 2013 (about an experience that
happened in 2012), "...three things that I previously didn't know: the existence
of Etsy, the fact that fabrics have "designers", and that
fabric designs have names", it was a bit of a leap that in April 2015, I would sell my
first piece self-designed fabric. Obviously, another example of
something that I had no expectation of doing when I restarted
sewing.
In terms of rewards, it's an indescribable feeling to see what
other people create with my fabrics. (Note that while I've
sold other designs, I have not seen what has been made with
any of them apart from my
P&P fabrics.)
Various projects made with my Pride & Prejudice fabric... |
Oh, and in quite a different variant of irony, the pandemic
threw me a bit of a generous curve with respect to fabric sales:
2020 was a "very good year" as everyone was busy buying fabric
to make masks.
Although the future is certainly unknown, it's been feeling like
it's the right time to wind this up. Readership is down. (Not that
I've ever been a numbers person, but I see my stats and they tell
a story.) I suspect people are generally engaging less and less
with blogs these days, which is unfortunate because it's still my
preferred social platform.
After the blogging stops, I won't stop sewing — I do have supplies
to use up, after all, and the interest is still there. But I
won't be pressured with a regular goal of making something with
the point of sharing the result. On that front, it's seriously
becoming a challenge to find things that I haven't seen ten times
over when I scour the internet looking for inspiration.
While I came into this journey focused on purses and bags, it's
clear from the photo above — and the other photo near the top of
this post — that I don't need any more of those. (And that's not
even inclusive of all that I've made.) I mainly ignore new bag
projects that I come across these days.
A thought that's always been at the back of my mind is that when
I run out of sewing related things to write about, it'll mean
the end of this blog, for all practical purposes. I'm getting
very close to that point.
Do I have enough content to last me to the end of year ten? I
truly don't know. But then, I've never known and yet here I am.
'Til next (year)...
Always enjoy your blog missives!
ReplyDeleteMy sincere thanks for that!
DeleteI always look forward to your emails, brightens up my Saturdays. HNY to you and yours
ReplyDeleteWarms my heart to hear that. All the best in 2023 to you and yours as well.
DeleteI look forward to your blog posts because I always learn something new! I have a few of your projects in my “to do” pile.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the appreciation and good luck conquering your "to do" pile! ;-)
DeleteYour blog has become a regular part of my life, it reminds me that it’s Saturday (retirement has erased the necessity of knowing what day it is) and your unique sewing inventions are way beyond anything else about sewing online!!! I too have many of your patterns in my to-make pile and the tie bag will come in handy for the box of my fathers ties I’ve saved for over a decade! Happy New Year and thanks for being you! Marie
ReplyDeleteThanks for regularly expressing your kind thoughts for what I do here, Marie. It provides that "wind beneath my wings" that is very much needed during this part of the journey. (Please also know that whenever you get around to making those projects, I will be here to appreciate them if you send me photos!)
DeleteOh, and about retirement taking away your sense of time... my other half went upstairs yesterday night totally unaware that it was NYE! Happy new year, right? ;-)
Congratulations on a decade of blogging! And please don't stop completely. I enjoy your enquiring mind and problem solving strategies.
ReplyDeleteThank you much, but to be clear, I'm trying to achieve a decade of blogging... not quite there yet! But I promise not to put arbitrary limits around the possibility of update posts beyond "the end".
Delete